Last night Sony introduced a new PRS-700 Reader e-book that will go on sale next month for $400. Once it launches, the current Sony Reader, the PRS-505, will continue to be available for $300. We got some brief playtime with an early model at Sony's launch event last night and found the improvements over the PRS-505 to be useful, but hardly revolutionary.
The most important advance is an integrated LED front light (not, as I've seen it mischaracterized, a "backlight"). Sony reps last night claimed that the light could shine for eight hours of reading on a charge. That estimate may based on the lowest lamp setting (there are two), however, and it is likely to invite the most criticism of the new Reader. After all, isn't the whole point of the E Ink technology in the Reader and its main competitor, the $360 Amazon Kindle, battery life that lasts for weeks of reading? Because E Ink is a passive reflective, rather than active screen technology, it doesn't require the constant backlighting that laptop screens do, giving it much longer battery life. So why compromise that with a light?
Well, why not? The light turns on when you need it, and turns off when you don't. It's the equivalent of a built-in Itty Bitty Book Light.
But, then again, you could just buy a book light and clip it to a PRS-505 or Kindle for about $10, so there has to be more to this device than just a light. And indeed there is: The PRS-700 is the first device of its kind to have a touchscreen. This seems like an obvious improvement. Since in the iPhone's been on the scene, people expect to be able to interact directly with the screens of their devices. In fact, when I first started showing friends the Kindle a year ago, one of the first things they did was start poking at the screen.
The touchscreen on the PRS-700, however, is a bit of a disappointment. Despite the fact that the refresh rate on the PRS-700 is far faster than both the Kindle and the original Sony Reader, the new Reader is still relatively slow to react to touch commands, so you often find the device responding to gestures a fraction of a second after you're done making them. Draw your finger across a page from right to left (or left to right—it's configurable) and the page turns. But it doesn't turn instantly, so there's almost enough time for you to attempt the motion a second time. The delay creates a bit of a disconnect between your gestures and the machine's responses. It is even more of an issue with the virtual on-screen keypad that the PRS-700 uses to let readers take "notes" on the Reader's virtual pages. Users can tap out notes on that keyboard using their fingers (with woefully inaccurate results) or a stylus (slightly more accurate). You can imagine that even a slight delay in typing can quickly turn maddening.
The Kindle also allows note taking through its built-in physical keyboard—which has even slower text input, but still allows for more accuracy due to the physical feedback of the keys themselves. But those keys bulk up the Kindle by comparison. All three e-books on the market have 6-in. screens (this seems to be a sweet spot for E Ink), but both Sony Readers are smaller than the Kindle. And the new one is about as compact as you can make this sort of thing without letting it feel flimsy. By eliminating all but seven slim physical buttons on the face of the device, Sony has made the PRS-700 Reader almost all screen, so this thing should pretty much disappear in a briefcase, backpack or purse.
Nevertheless, I'm not sure that a slow touchscreen and a light are worth a $100 premium. The PRS-700 still has no wireless functionality—not only doesn't it download books over a Kindle-like Whispernet (really just Sprint's EV-DO network), the PRS-700 doesn't even have Wi-Fi, so novels must be uploaded via USB.
And none of these e-books offer what I feel is the magic bullet for such devices—a second screen (page) to help you locate yourself while reading. It would bring digital readers that much closer to imitating the feel of a real book. But once again, digital books have made another ever-so-small stride forward. They are easy on the eyes, they are compact and portable, they have long battery life—these devices are, in short, almost as good as real books. —Glenn Derene
Sony PRS-700 Reader
Sony PRS-700 Reader
Sony PRS-700 Reader