If you haven’t yet heard of the Sony Reader, you will have in a few months’ time. This device is set to become to books what the iPod was to music, and what the digital camera was to photography. Publishers, beware! The Sony Reader is going to revolutionise digital media. In summary: I think it’s amazing. Here is a short Sony Reader Review.
Although it’s been available in the US for over a year, the latest incarnation of the Reader (the model PRS-505, which replaces the previous PRS-500) is only due to be released in the UK on the 4th September, and will be available in both Sony Stores and in Waterstone’s bookshops. Waterstone’s is also starting an electronic bookshop on the 4th to coincide with the launch of the Reader, although W.H.Smith seems to be the first well-known company already offering electronic book downloads.
However, with the launch a few days away, Sony Stores are taking delivery of the new Reader, and thanks to a helpful store owner, I was allowed to be the first person to purchase it as a retail consumer. Of course, a few devices have been given to reviewers. Keen to get these devices out, the store owner even gave me a discount on the retail price of £199. I won’t say which store or what discount, so that he keeps his job!
I’ve been reading on the device most of the day, in between holding my new daughter, and I am very impressed: the Reader lives up to all the hype about it. If you haven’t yet seen an e-ink display, you will be surprised by its readability.
So what is the Sony Reader? Like several other offerings presently available (such as the Amazon Kindle, although the Kindle isn’t yet available in the UK), the Reader is an electronic book which allows you to comfortably read large amounts of text – electronic books can be read on a computer, but the back-lit displays of computers lead to eyestrain, and in addition laptops are hard to read outside. The Sony Reader and its cousins use an electrophoretic display (e-ink) that is readable in pretty much any conditions. Believe me that you have to see it to really appreciate it – it’s very different from the computer display you’re probably reading this blog on right now.
To answer the question of why not just read on your computer, consider this exchange I had over coffee at work a few days ago:
Me: Have you ever read a book?
A.N.Other: Yes, of course, I’ve read hundreds.
Me: Have you ever read a book on a computer?
A.N.Other: No.
Me: Why not?
A.N.Other: Because it hurts my eyes.
Me: So what do you do if you want to read something electronic?
A.N.Other: I print it out.
That to me is the whole reason for having an electronic book reader: the screen is the key part of it. I read a lot both at home and for work, and a device that lets you carry around more than 100 books (the Sony Reader’s internal memory allows for about 160 typical-sized books) is very useful. The screen is easy on the eye and large enough to be useful – far larger than the alternative method of using a PDA, which I found to be irritating in the extreme. When travelling, I can now carry a large collection of books around with me, and read them comfortably.
Seven years ago, when the iPod was first released, people asked why anyone would want to carry their entire music library around with them, rather than just take one or two CDs. Well, everyone under thirty seems have an iPod now. The same will be true of electronic books with the Reader. In fact, the killer application is likely to be in education, where students need access to a range of textbooks and course notes. An e-book reader is the ideal method of storing these, and rumours abound that the next version of the Amazon Kindle will be a cheaper unit aimed at students (although Amazon itself are denying it).
So what do you get for your money? Well, the UK boxed product contains the device itself, a nice leather cover, a USB charging cable, a CD installer for the Sony ebook software (which you only really need for purchased books), and a CD containing 100 classic texts – the last part is really great for me, as I mainly read old books anyway. There are also various bits of paper and guarantees.
Next to the power swith, the Reader has two card slots on the top edge (Memory Stick Pro and Secure Digital) to expand the internal 256 MB memory theoretically up to 16 Gb, and headphone jack and volume control on the bottom edge for the included MP3 player. Pictures can also be viewed on the device, although the 16-level grayscale screen is not intended for this. However, audio quality is as good as on my iPod, and you can of course listen to music while reading. There is no internal speaker on the unit, but it is a book reader not a hi-fi. A mini-USB and power charging socket on the bottom edge complete the available ports: charging is done via the supplied USB cable, but a separate AC adapter can be bought. Personally, I would but a mains USB charger for a few pounds/dollars and use it to charge all your other mini-USB kit.
Reading on the device is fantastic. As I said earlier, the screen has to be seen to be believed: the best way to describe it is it that it’s like looking at an off-white printed page that has been laminated. The screen can be viewed at any angle, the only caveat being that it can reflect lights, unlike a matte print page. It is much, much better than a laptop screen, so much better it makes you wonder why you put up with LCDs for so long. 800×600 resolution on a 6-inch screen doesn’t sound like a lot, but even at the smallest text display size the text is crisp even when viewed close up. Three sizes of text can be selected, and the rest of the menu system is pretty intuitive after a few minutes. The ‘manual’ consists of a small fold-out Quick Start guide, but you don’t even need that. Whilst the button layout seems strange to begin with, after holding the device in its leather case for a while it’s obvious that someone has thought carefully about the button positions and overall design of the device. This is not apparently true of the Kindle, where there are complaints that it is hard to hold the device without accidentally turning pages. The Kindle is not yet available in the UK (and might not be at all this year), so I can’t compare myself. Unlike most Sony software, which is pretty crap on the whole, the Reader menu system is straightforward to use. The graphics are utilitarian rather than well-designed, but you get used to them almost immediately.
The Reader can access not only the Sony .lrf file format (inherited from the Japanese-only Librie device), but can read .TXT plain text, RTF (i.e. your Microsoft Word documents), PDF, and the emerging EPUB format. To me, this places the Reader way ahead of the Kindle, which apart from plain text can only read the proprietary .azw books available on the Amazon website. The Kindle (in the US at least) has over-the-air downloads using the included EV-DO wireless connection, theoretically dispensing with the need for a computer, but I don’t see many people without a computer and broadband buying these things. EPUB and some PDF files can be re-flowed to adapt the text to the A5-ish screen of the Reader, but even PDFs containing scanned images of A4 sheets are just about legible, meaning that bookworms can download scans from Google Books, or academics can view scans of old papers while they are out and about. It would be nice if the firmware were updated to allow zoom-and-pan, as it doesn’t seem to yet.
Text-based documents load pretty quickly, and turning pages takes just the refresh time of the display – a bit less than a second. The flash of the whole screen is odd at first, but then you think of it as just like turning a real page. Graphic-heavy documents like scanned PDF take longer, and the device struggles a bit with loading them. I’ve only had the device for a day, so I can’t report what the battery life is like, but battery is only used when turning pages, and is reportedly good for around 7000 page turns. That’s a lot of reading – more than a month maybe? I’ll let you know.
Interactivity on the Sony Reader is limited. Since it lacks a keyboard or touch screen, it would be hard to implement a search function, and accordingly there isn’t one. The Kindle does have both keyboard and search, which is a big advantage, but I can’t get over just how ugly the Kindle is. The Sony at least is small, and well-designed. You can bookmark pages on the Reader, but I haven’t really used that feature yet. Some people have commented to me that it would be good to be able to make notes on documents – back to the student use again. To do this, you could buy an iRex iLiad from WH Smith, but adding a touchscreen doubles the price to £400, and I think the iLiad also looks clunky. But it’s a bit like asking a pig to lay eggs – if you want interactivity like this – which needs a fast display – a laptop is the right thing to use. Right now, eink displays are amazingly clear, but not fast enough for this kind of work. You pay your money, you take your choice. By the way, colour eink displays are in prototype but are still a way off.
So, is it worth the money? £200 seems a bit steep (and you can get it for USD300=£150 in the USA), but I think it’s worth it if you read a lot (maybe an obvious statement). If you like out-of-copyright books then you are on to a winner with the Reader, as you can download ebooks for free from the likes of Feedbooks and Manybooks. In paper form these typically cost a few pounds each, so after 30 or so books the Reader pays for itself. For academics and students the PDF compatibility is a real plus, and I can easily see the Reader becoming the normal method of reading books, papers and course notes at universities within a few years.
The Sony Reader is one of the devices pioneering a change in the way reading is done. With the three best-known booksellers in the UK – Amazon, Waterstones and WH Smith – either selling or about to sell books electronically, a sea change is coming in the way people read. Already, new sellers like Lulu are giving authors the ability to publish without traditional publishers, and thus increase their royalties whilst offering lower prices to customers. Like the music industry did with mp3 players, publishing companies must be quaking in their boots. In 5 years’ time, you’ll even be reading your newspapers on one of these.
