Comments on: Hands on with Sony's new PRS-700 digital reader

Sony announced the PRS-700, a new digital reader that features a touch-screen display and built-in light. It will go on sale in November for $400.

[spinoza2]

I've had my PRS-500 for a couple of years now and it's a great little reading device, with it being more ergonomic and functional than the Kindle (not to mention the aesthetics...). I have over a 100 books on it, and the Sony bookstore is as good as Amazon's (in spite of the inflated numbers Amazon gives for its Kindle store). With discounts and other incentives I got my Reader for a little over $200, which is a good price point for such a reader. Pricing the PRS-700 at $400 will be its biggest negative, and it's a significant one in Sony succeeding with developing its e-book market. Too bad, because the e-book concept has great potential. Imagine where Apple would be today if it had priced iTunes songs at $1.99 a song, and its iPod were still $400 (the price when it first came out)!! If Sony had been able to keep the price under $300 for its new Reader, and then to introduce it with a glitzy Apple-style marketing campaign (the new improved ?Ultra? Reader!), then Sony may have succeeded it achieving its breakthrough in the e-book market. Under the current economic circumstances, I'm afraid the PRS-700 will be dead on arrival, with only a handful of dedicated e-book consumers willing to spend that much for a couple of new features.

[alvie_singer]

I agree w/ these comments in general, but will say that the reader's aren't in most stores (Target & Borders excluded) & so most people are buying from Sony Style. They almost always have $150 off w/ a $299 purchase when you get a CC account. This is how I've bought both readers (get CC, get stuff, cancel CC, wait a year till something worthwhile comes out again). I'll be doing the same for this one, I imagine.

[vlaroman]

What is CC account and how can I get it???
Because the present price is way too high...

[nxp3]

I don't think the lack of wifi is a problem or make it less useful than a kindle. For one, it's an ebook reader. It's not like you're always downloading ebooks all the time. You're not going to have an online reading competition head to head. You're going to download a few books and it's going to last a weeks before you need to make a transfer. I like the sony reader...I'm considering buying one. It's a good size and with the added speed is probably just right. I think the kindle is fugly and battery life is probably too short from added wifi. A reader should have good screen, e-ink gives that. An ebook should have good battery life, sony gives that and I don't think the kindle is good enough. The Ilaid is an ebook reader trying too hard to be a tablet pc, making it a bad ereader. I think the Sony is just right. Though with the touch screen I would like to have some kind of way to sketch things and take hand written notes. That would be very useful for a quick note. I'll have to do a little more research before I buy, but this looks like the one I would buy.

[Renegade Knight]

I've picked up a ultraportable. For the first time I've started organizing my digital library using this PC. Already I can tell the screen is too small to read some of the detailed diagrams. The organization and indexing doesn't exist.

I'm hard pressed to see how a reader is anything but a one trick pony when a personal computer still can't do the larger job.

[rjpdx]

Meh. I'm much more intrigued by what's coming next: http://www.plasticlogic.com/

This Sony reader just isn't a leap forward.

[ReVeLaTeD]

Interesting...but it won't get over. Guaranteed such a device will cost a mint - and it's a hard sell to a business. Business customers will simply say, "so what does this give me that my laptop does not?" And having been a sales person in a former life I can say that it would be extremely difficult to answer that question...besides weight advantage. It might be good when you want to set up displays of your stuff in your front office maybe.

[lileoj]

As far as i'm concerned I will NEVER by another Sony product ever again. I had the PRS-500. And it was a flimsy piece of crap that broke twice within 3 months. First time was within a month and Bestbuy replaced it. Second time it was past the 30 day return of bestbuy so I sent it to sony and they refused to warranty it because they said it was abuse. NO this flimsy piece of crap is too fragile! Let me explain i've had portable electronics since I was 14 and for the past 20 years i've NEVER broke any of them! I'm an meticulously careful with them because there so expensive. This things screen would break on the slightest amount of reasonable pressure. DO NOT GET ANY OF THESE DEVICES BECAUSE IF IT BREAKS SONY WILL BLOW YOU OFF. I filed a complaint with the better business bureau. But I never heard anything back.

Now I have an Amazon Kindle. Its BEAUTIFUL and well built I have not have ANY troubles AT ALL.

[lileoj]

As far as i'm concerned I will NEVER by another Sony product ever again. I had the PRS-500. And it was a flimsy piece of crap that broke twice within 3 months. First time was within a month and Bestbuy replaced it. Second time it was past the 30 day return of bestbuy so I sent it to sony and they refused to warranty it because they said it was abuse. NO this flimsy piece of crap is too fragile! Let me explain i've had portable electronics since I was 14 and for the past 20 years i've NEVER broke any of them! I'm an meticulously careful with them because there so expensive. This things screen would break on the slightest amount of reasonable pressure. DO NOT GET ANY OF THESE DEVICES BECAUSE IF IT BREAKS SONY WILL BLOW YOU OFF. I filed a complaint with the better business bureau. But I never heard anything back.

Now I have an Amazon Kindle. Its BEAUTIFUL and well built I have not have ANY troubles AT ALL.

[lilac_jive]

I'm suprised at this- I actually dropped my Reader from a couple of feet and although the case chipped a little, it was fine. It is a PRS-505, so maybe it's sturdier, but you didn't explain what happened. I keep mine in my purse and I've had it for about six months, and it's pretty damn sturdy. It feels much more solid than the kindle, which is just plastic (PRS is metal).

I'm supremely happy with my PRS-505, and all the people I know who have one are too. I'm glad I didn't get the Kindle (too many buttons and I'm not paying extra money to have another wifi device, the only plus is you can get magazines and newspapers, and I'm pretty sure Sony will have that soon). As for the new PRS-700, I'm not sure if its worth the extra $100. My Reader does exactly what I need it to do, the extra stuff only brings in more "cool" factor.

For those discussing justifying the price over using a laptop or computer to do the same thing, I can say as an avid reader the ability to pull a book out anywhere is completely worth it. The battery life is insanely long, so if I'm on a long trip there's no worry about the battery dying, like a laptop. Obviously I wouldn't recommend it if you aren't a big reader, but if you are, I suggest you check it out.

[ramsey987]

Not even Sony would suggest that their online store matches Amazon. It's silly to think otherwise. As far as wireless delivery, no one with a Kindle is jacking in their readers to load books. That would be a step backwards in current technology.

On the touch screen front, it's easy to wipe a cell phone touch screen on your sleeve or pants to wipe off the fingerprints, but doing so with a large book reader will not be easy. Are you going to carry a cleaning rag with you? You won't want to touch your screen after a week of use. This will not be a Kindle killer.

[make_or_break]

If the PRS-700 has the same sort of screen finish as the PRS-500, I doubt that fingerprint marks will be an issue...unless you really, REALLY have oily skin. Not everyone buys into the super shiny, high gloss finish that Apple and certain others use.

[ReVeLaTeD]

Silly. The screen texture is not glossy; fingerprints (CLEAN fingers, that is) do not transfer to the screen.

[gadgetguy2000]

I'm holding out for Apple to create an iTouch that is the same size as either the Amazon Kindle or Sony eReader. With the iTunes app store, they would be poised to dominate this field if they so chose. Think about it, a device that does it all, eBooks, Magazines, Music, Video, Web Browsing and Games.

Man that could really be Game Over for the others !!

[Pucksr]

This kind of comment always upset me.

The Sony Reader and the Amazon Kindle use digital paper(e-ink) technology. LCD screens don't even compare to digital paper. It is comparing apples to oranges.

E-ink isn't good for everything, but it has some advantages that an LCD will never be able to touch:
1. Insane battery life(as long as you have a static image). How insane? How about no power required whatsoever to keep an image on the screen
2. No backlighting. Why an advantage? Try checking your iTouch in full sunlight while wearing sunglasses
3. No eyestrain
4. No flicker
5. Insanely thin

This digital paper has some severe limitations, such as slow refresh rate(nowhere near the refresh rate found on LCD).

Apple could make this super iTouch you invision, but I would still prefer to read books on a Sony Reader or Kindle.
Especially if I had to spend a week away from a power plug. The Sony reader will hold a charge that can take me through 7,500 pages. Unless you are one hell of a speed reader, I don't think your Ipod Touch will last nearly as long.

[molotov]

Here is an excerpt of a repost of something I have composed and posted on September 25th;
"...What I strongly urge everyone to do is to find the next innovator. Google? Amazon? Sony? How about All three!
A web surfing device that runs on Android and is built by Sony with premium content provided by Amazon [DRM free, Apple fanboys need not Apply {no pun intended}] that will come to squash away all competition involving notebooks, mp3 players and smart phones ..."

David is lightly touching on what I was strongly proposing. What we need to do now is to heighten our expectations of what we expect in electronic products and stop buying the purposely half-done models.

Zingnatious; Sony new reader is $400.00. I guess Apple beat Sony and Amazon to it. My $230.00 Touch reads books, has backlight, and flips pages nicely all with consortium of Stanza App. By the way; the books are free. The Touch also plays music, surfs the net, sends email, gets me weather, plays games and opens my beer bottles. Beat that AMAZONY! SOHO, NYC.

[SHADuck]

Kindle this or Kindle that

Today, I was frustrated using Open Office Writer on my Acer, so I stuck it into my inherited Mac Book Pro sine it has MS Word. Well it looked absolutely gorgeous! If I would read on an electronic device any more than stock quotes (Quotron), I suppose that would be it.

I suppose e-book makers got to get the touch and feel right, that we readers love. And most importantly, underline and circle in myriad colors. And the upgrades to Kindle woldn't have recovered the initial cost of investment compared to a dozen books.

Fight on!

[AppleSuxLeo]

The Acer "ONE" Netbook with XP/120GB/B,G wireless/GB RAM/Webcam etc. is only $349 and it is much more useful.
These reader devices belong on "Sharper Image"

[Gully098]

Hello,

The problem with the Kindle is that you can't get it in Canada. You can only get it if you have a US mailing address. Also Canadians cannot purchase anything from the Kindle store unless they have a valid US mailing address and a credit card issued from a major US banking institute.

The only option is something like the Sony reader. The books appear to be compareable in price to the Amazon prices once taxes and exchange are factored in.

I would have liked a downloading capability but to be honest how many times and I going to drop everything I'm doing and need to urgently download something? Probably never. It would be a "nice have" feature but I don't need it.

No matter how you look at it there will always be a latest and greatest version available which makes everything you purchase practically obsolete from the second you order it. I don't have my Sony Reader yet but I'm looking forward to getting it.

[sarahs7700]

I live in Canada, and we don't have the kindle here, and there is no way of knowing when it will make it to Canada (if it does at all). So if you want a good ebook reader with the paper like display Sony is the way to go. I would love to get one of these. For a while I have been watching the PRS-505 and would have gotten one if I had had the money. My husband told me to wait, and I'm happy that I did because the 700 looks fantastic. At first the price did seem high, but when you consider that the light alone for a 505 is around $60 (add that to the $299 price tag) it's not that bad. I am a student and I love the fact that you can highlight and make notes on it.

[Buelltoo]

I am in my mid 60's and starting to suffer from eye strain if I read a lot, especially from a computer screen. I both like to read, and need to read, so I think that the PRS-700 might help me.

Another factor is that I always like to have a couple of novels with me, but also have to carry reference documents and files, but need good mobility because I ride a motorcycle, a lap top is too big, and my Palm T/X is too small.

I am hoping that the PRS-700 will be the perfect compromise for me. I just do not want to be the first one to get one in case there are problems, so I will wait a month or two.

[ms_mae]

My PRS-700 arrived last week, and so far I'm pretty darned pleased with it. I'm a grad student, and a lot of my readings are PDFs of journal articles or photocopies. The Reader handles text-based PDFs like dream. I love being able to resize the text. The features that inspired my purchase are the ability to read PDF & Word documents (it kinda reads word documents--the completely underwhelming Library program automatically converts them to .rtf when you upload) and the ability to highlight and make notes. Finally, my readings and notes are searchable--this is a huge timesaver. It doesn't handle picture-based PDFs so well--you can't change the text size or make notes.

In addition to my school work, I read a lot for fun. In the last week I've downloaded a ton of free classics from Project Gutenberg and read three novels with the 700. It is a great device to curl up with and read from for hours at at time. The case is sturdy, and it fits comfortably in your hand. The buttons are all well-placed, so you don't have to worry about accidentally switching pages (something I've heard is a problem with the kindle). The refresh rate on the screen is noticeably faster than the Kindle and the PRS-505--about the duration of a real page-turn. The 700 can get a little heavy after a few hours reading, but not horribly so. Oh, and here's a feature I have come to appreciate a great deal--the BUILT-IN BOOK LIGHT. It drains the battery faster, but it still lasts way longer than a back-lit screen.

The 700 is not a perfect device--notably, a cut-and-paste feature for the notes would be nice (but the iPhone doesn't have cut-and-paste, either), and the computer-to-reader interface is the least intuitive piece of software I've had to deal with in years--but those inconveniences are minor compared to the ease of carrying everything I could possibly want to read in one sleek, battery-sipping 10 oz device.

[Gully098]

Hello,

You say you got your Sony 700 reader last week. What type of memory card does it take? I bought an 8GB SCHC card. Would that work? I've been surfing the net and can't find anything on it. Please let me know if you have any information.

Thank you,
JC

[ericbtsai]

I've been holding out for Sony to wow me with significant changes to my original Sony Reader(PRS-500), and boy am I happy I waited! The PRS-700 is worth every penny and a big improvement on the 500 or 505.
The screen is perfect as ever and very easy to read from. The LED "side-light" is only so-so, but a much better option versus buying a reading light add-on.
The touch screen is very responsive to the page turning swipe and the ability to type notes in the margins is awesome.
I'm very impressed with the ability to resize, zoom-in, -out and highlight text in order to annotate or paste a quote.
The stylus works much better than fingers with the touch-keyboard, but I learned how to use the keyboard with my fingers and get by.
Battery life seems to be about the same, or only a little bit worse than previous versions.

I was able to use my 4GB SDHC memory card with no problem and the music player is pretty good, but nothing special, plus a power drain. There's more internal memory(?), I think because I load quite a few more titles into the devices storage than in my trusty PRS-500.
Wi-fi definitely would be cool to have, but I don't miss it too much. I just plug in my iPod, blackberry and Sony reader into my computer when I get home every night anyway, so I'm not sure if I'd use wifi very much.
As for the various formats, I found that I have no problems with word documents if I use MS Word to open the .docx file and Save As a .rtf file myself. Plus, I can use Notepad or some other text editor to set Title, Author, Publisher and other information into the .rtf files. I will admit that PDF are still not quite so easy to deal with, but I think that has more to do with the limitations with Adobe than the eReader. A lot of the books that I have on my PRS-500 and now my PRS-700 were purchased from the publisher's web site, obtained from disk versions of text books or study guides, or obtained for free from various projects and libraries in addition to titles purchased from Sony's site. Heck, with only a little work I'm able to convert my RSS feed materials and read them on my reader daily. I think the only thing I might want is something to capture and save/recognize hand-written notes.
I'm a voracious reader so the Sony Reader is perfect for me, but if you're only an occaisional reader I wouldn't recommend ANY e-reader.
The Sony readers all look very stylish and well-designed compared to the fugly Kindle with the pain-in-the-arse big side page-turners, which were too easy to click on the prev and forwad buttons.
Oh yeah, the 6" screen is good sized and just as excellent as the smaller versions.
All-in-all, I'm very impressed with Sony on this product.

[krosshair]

I have been watching the E-ink reader races very closely as the wife and i are both avid readers.we both got worked up by the kindle hype last year until we found out that because of the rogers whispernet wifi that it uses,it will be totally useless outside of the U.S.The touchy shoulder buttons and cheap plastic body also gave us some concerns and the sony 505 was not a lot better so we were going to bootleg one anyway and do our best by downloading via gutenberg,and torrents.THEN I SAW THE SONY 700!. The 700 tacklea all our concerns with both the 505 and the kindle.the sturdy body and the sidelighting and being able to rotate the book page is a great plus.The touch screen just seals the deal for us.My wife is visually challanged and i was concerned bout her having to fiddle with the tiny qwerty buttons on the bottom of the kindle.Sony was very smart to have this available to people outside of the U.S and i think not having the wifi download feature to be able to offer it to everyone else was a smart move.having multiple file formats as well as e-pub support makes it a reader for all.I chatted with a few friends in the book business and seems like E-pub will be the standard in just a few years.SO its the 700 reader for this household and the only porblem i see is who gets the first one? me or the wife? lol tc all

[dz1000]

If your wife is visually challenged then you should get the PRS-505. It has a much better display than the PRS-700. The touch screen layer that's been added to the 700's screen has reduced sharpness and contrast.

I don't know how you can say the build quality of the 505 is not much better than the Kindle's. the Kindle is plastic and looks like an 80's reject, but the PRS-505 has a sleek looking, all metal body and looks fantastic. I own the 505 and consider it to be the flagship Sony ebook reader due to the poor screen of the PRS-700. The 505 also supports E-pub when upgraded to the latest firmware, so that shouldn't be an issue for you.

[rs11gps]

My experience of several weeks with the PRS-700 lead me to recommend buyers wait for the next generation of Sony reader.

Pros: touchscreen, fair refresh rate, SD card slot.

Cons: Poor contrast makes it an eyestrain to read at length. Side-lighting a poor 'work-around' for dim lighting. If you need to zoom in a document to read it, the PRS-700 resets zoom every page! Difficult to navgate within a document. Flimsy front cover makes damaging the screen a real possibility.

Wishes: Fix the above and add a hi-res color display like many of today's small laptops.

[superstevetech]

Here is a recent review that ultimately gives the PRS-700 a thumbs up:

http://www.techheck.com/journal/2009/1/7/sony-prs-700-portable-reader-review.html