Culture

Introduction

I’ve been picked to beta test Akademika.no‘s online shop, and got sent a Sony Reader PRS-600 that I could keep after testing. Akademika.no is to sell digital books in the formats PDF and ePub, and they are using Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) to add DRM to the books you buy. In the following weeks I will be writing about ADE and my experiences with buying books online from Akademika.no. We will also get access to a few Norwegian books, but these will only be available for other about mid March. But first I want to write a review of the reading device Sony Reader PRS-600 Touch Edition.

As I have been using Bookeen Cybook 3rd Gen for two years now, this device has become my reference model for testing ebook readers.

The device

Sony released PRS-600 (Touch Edition) and 300 (Pocket Edition) at events at the New York Public Library and the British Library in London August 25 2009. The models are not available through Sony Norway, and therefor some shops have decided to import them from UK.

The Touch Edition is a melding of both the highly popular PRS-505 and the PRS-700 models, and replaced them both. The new device is available in the colors red, black and silver. The first thing you notice is that Sony removed almost all the input buttons of the 505 model, and that like the 700 before it, the 600 rather uses the touch screen for input. It retains a few buttons, but they are placed discreetly at the bottom of the screen. These take care of the basic functions of turning pages, accessing the home screen, zooming in and out and firing up the context-dependent options menus. Everything else is controlled through the touchscreen.

PRS-600 almost has the same size as the 505 model, except from being 2mm thicker. But a the weight of 286g, it is 26g heavier than the previous model. Compared to the Cybook, I would almost say that Sony takes pride in making their devices. All their models have an aluminium case. Holding it feels like holding quality and not just cheap plastic! For better reading comfort the PRS-600 has a non-slip coating on the back. I suppose this is to make it easier to hold without a cover, but the first thing I did was to buy Sony’s brown cover for this device (Sony PRSASC6). The device then get a more book-like feel, but more importantly I can better protect the reader if I should drop it.

In order to keep the front as clear as possible, Sony has put all the necessary ports, sockets and switches on the top or bottom edges of the device. Sony say that you can store around 350 ebooks on the PRS-600, but if that is not enough for you, you will find slots for both SD (supports SDHC card with up to 16GB capacity) and Memory Stick Duo storage expansions on the top of the device, along with the on/off switch and the stylus holder. On the bottom, the device is equipted with a 3.5mm headphones jack, a mini USB port and power socket. Sony doesn’t bundle a power adaptor, as you can recharge the device over USB. A power charger can be bought separatly, and you should consider it, as it takes four hours to charge over USB opposed to just two with the 5.2V charger.

A tap of the menu button gives you a grid display with the ability to go back to the book, newspaper or magazine you were reading, to choose more books, add notes to a book for later or view collections.

The Touch Screen

The 600′s display is the latest electronic paper offering from E Ink, called Vizplex. Like the screen in the original Reader, it stretches 6in corner-to-corner, has a resolution of 800 x 600 and displays images in eight shades of grey. My old Cybook only had four shades of grey, so this an improvement. Sadly, the screen is the weakest point on this device. First of all, screen contrast (how dark the letters are) isn’t as good as what you’ll find on competing models, and it does get progressively worse in darker rooms. Having the PRS-600 next to the old Cybook, the first thing I noticed was that the letters and icons on this model appeared to be lighter and the background slightly darker. There is sadly no way to adjust the contrast. This means that the device needs slightly more ambient light than paper and the Cybook indoors to get the best out of it. Second, the Touch Edition’s screen is slightly more reflective than non-touch devices and has some glare issues, but it is said to be less then what was the case with PRS-700. At certain angles, with normal overhead lighting, the glare was so bad that I couldn’t read the text on parts of the screen. So this might not be the screen for a sunny day on the balconny!

I haven’t been playing to much with PRS-600 yet, but in the beginning I was using a bit to much pressure when operating the touch screen. I don’t use the stylus to operate the device, and have now learned to use the tip of my finger or the flat side of my fingernail to do the needed gestures.

The Sony PRS-600 is one of the fastest ereaders I have tried. Electronic paper screens don’t refresh as fast as other screen types, but this device is much faster then the Cybook to do page turns.

No wireless connection

PRS-600 might be Sony’s last model without wifi. Their later released Reader Daily Edition (PRS-900) has wireless built in (and a 7″ screen). The Daily Edition is as far as I know not available outside of U.S., and I haven’t seen it in any shop here in Norway. Fact is, that I haven’t seen any ereader, except of the Kindle, with wireless connection (including cellular) here in Norway. The lack of wireless access means all files must be dragged and dropped from a PC and that there is no book shop accessable from with in the device.

Battery

The battery is sealed into the unit, and could therefor be difficult to change on your own.

Sony reckons the Touch’s battery is good for 7500 page turns, up from 7000 on the original Reader. But this is not something that I can measure in an effective way, so I’ll take Sony’s word for it.

A more interesting thing is that you can only charge the device over USB with a PC, not with a Mac.

User Interface

The PRS-600 has a fairly logical user interface, and I must say that navigating works far better then on my old Cybook. The most obvious advantage of the new touch interface is that you can flip through pages quickly, either forward or reverse. The direction this works in can be changed to suit your preference, but I prefer navigating with two of the buttons below the screen.

Some functionality is only available through the touch screen, for instance will a quick double-tap in the top right corner of the screen set a bookmark, and a double tap on a word, will fire up the built-in dictionary to tell you what said term means. The Sony device comes with dictionaries in both British English and American English, but there is no dictionary for other European languages.

The device also comes with a built in virtual keyboard, that allows readers to search for words in the book they are reading.

Notes and Annotation

With the stylus you can make use of PRS-600′s annotation and notes functionality. Let us start with notes. On a basic level, you can turn the ereader into a notepad, creating single notes that aren’t tied to any books or documents. The notes can be made with the onscreen keyboard or as freehand with the stylus.

Annotations is best done with the stylus, but can also be done with you finger, by first highlighting words and then adding the annotations with the virtual keyboard or by freehand. After having done annotations on the ereader, you can “merge” those annotations with annotations you may have already added to the same book using your computer. This is done from within Sony’s eLibrary software on your computer. It was nice to see that notes could be easily erased when no longer desired.

Accessability

With the Size button on the button of the screen, you can choose among five font settings: small, medium, large, extra large, and extra-extra large. Redrawing the text on the screen with the new font size is done amazingly fast.

One thing that surprised me that Sony hadn’t included in this device, is that it doesn’t come with a built-in accelerometer that automatically flips the screen when you turn it (portrait to landscape). Having said that, you can manually set the screen orientation. This feature isn’t too practical when reading a book on a 6″ screen, but can be useful when viewing photographs. In other words, I will not miss it!

Supported File Formats

I’m new to Sony’s ereaders, and I’m impressed to see what file formats PRS-600 can handle. With the device you can read EPUB/ADEPT eBook and BBeB Book (Sony’s own format) – with and without DRM – as well as PDF, Word, plain text and RTF files.

For those of you, who like to listen to music on your ereader, the PRS-600 can play DRM-free AAC and MP3 files, but sadly Sony doesn’t let the users view list of audio files in any way other than alphabetically by song title or artist. I’m almost tempted to say that the ereader is not a portable music player!

I’m not one that view images on my ereader, for that I want a color display. But the device can show images in greyscale, with JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP files all supported.

I hate PDF and with all the security holes that Adobe Reader lately have had, I would like to see the format abandoned. But I guess that’s not gonna happen any time soon. The PRS-600 handles PDF fairly well with it’s faster processor, something that was really noticable on larger files and when using the zoom feature on those documents. I find 6″ screen not suited for PDFs, you need larger screen e-readers for that, like the iREX 1000.

Included Software

I would have loved to see Sony’s eBook Library application have a purpose here in Europe, other then handeling annotations and firmware updates. The software is available for both Windows and Mac, and comes with one of the best book shops I have seen for ereaders.

Verdict

The PRS-600 is one of the most popular ereaders available in Norway, and with it’s touchscreen user interface, navigation has become much easier. I find the built-in dictionary great and I guess that I will be using the annotation software from time to time. But I have not the need for yet another basic note taker. The ereader is exceptionally easy to use and even a first time eBook user should be able to enjoy it within minutes. The screen, though is as mentioned an improvement on its predecessor, but still has some problems with reflectivity and contrast; nonetheless, the unit is very easy to read in general and most worthy of consideration when shopping for an eBook Reader.