Sony Digital Reader Touch Edition Black PRS600BC
The Reader Touch Edition features a 6″display with simple, easy-to-use touchscreen navigation. Turn pages with the swipe of a finger and enjoy fast and intuitive navigation of your favorite books. Take freehand notes and highlight sections of text you want to revisit later, just as you would in a real book, using the included stylus. If you prefer, a virtual keyboard is also available for entering quick notes or searching your eBooks. If you want, you can even export your notes to your computer using the eBook Library software. Enjoy access to a wider number of books from a wider number of places. By supporting both industry standard formats, ePub and PDF, you can access books at Sony’s eBookstore, check out books from public libraries, access over 500,000 free public domain titles from Google, as well as sharing sites, online aggregators and personal publishers (Internet access is required). Not sure which books to bring on your trip? With the Reader Touch Edition, you will never have to make that choice again. 512MB of onboard memory lets you carry up to 350 of your favorite books at a time. Whether you’re venturing across town or across the country, the Reader Touch Edition makes an ideal travelling companion. Measuring just 0.4″ thin and weighing less than 9 ounces, the Reader Touch Edition is thinner and more lightweight than almost any book, and even many magazines. The Reader Touch Edition utilizes E-Ink screen technology to deliver an amazing, paper-like display that’s more like ink on paper and fully readable in direct sunlight. Enjoy up to two full weeks of reading (7,500 continuous page turns) on a single battery charge. Paper-like display for easy, natural reading Two full weeks of reading on a single battery charge; Built-in Oxford American English eDictionary; Intuitive eBook Library software for PC and Mac 5 adjustable font sizes to customize your
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars excellent device, strange screen and low reflow capabilities
The device itself is very nice. No fancy stuff, maybe excepting audio and pictures that I don’t need at all. No WiFI, no 3G/GPRS, but it’s enough if you can add your books at home and just read them when you are not connected to a PC.
The bad things are:
- screen: has a very strange reflection (being touchscreen) and you’ll see your face reflected in the screen all the time
- compatibility: not so good when reading technical books, like PDF ebooks. Reading them at original size is out of the question, increasing the text size will omit the pictures, will reflow/omit the tables and will be no more than a regular book. The workaround for this is to change the orientation of the screen, read on landscape mode, which is somehow strange, and try not to increase the text size.
4 Stars Upgrade from PRS-505 to PRS-600
I have been using a PRS-505 since Jan 09 and I loved it. My wife has wanted a reader as well so I figured I’d give her mine (mint condition) and upgrade. I really like the 600, it boasts a lot of new features that were missing from my 505. The built in dictionary is very handy and saves me time from having to look up words from time to time. Simply double tap a word and there’s your definition. The new design is very sexy and I like the feel of the matte finish on the back of the device.
Pros:
The touchscreen is pretty handy and rather responsive. A quick swipe to the left or right changes the page for you. I find it to be more convenient, but there is still a button page turn, if that’s what you prefer.
The interface is pretty nice. You can view your library by title or by cover art. Included in the right spine is a stylus. With this you can draw notes on pages or you can freehand drawings in a separate application (you can also use your finger for this).
The internal memory has been bumped up a 100mbs to 350, and I believe you now store 250 books internally. The device also has two slots for external memory (SD card and Sony’s Memory Stick Pro Duo).
There is a built in MP3 player, but I have yet to use this feature on my old 505 or my current 600
Added also is a search feature which you can use with the on-screen keyboard.
CONS:
Readability is slightly hindered due to the extra layer for the touchscreen. Its not dramatic, but my 505 is noticeably more legible in most lighting conditions. Also due to the touchscreen, the screen is much more reflective and gives off a glare when held in certain positions.
It’s bit heavier than my 505. But honestly I don’t consider this a con really. I like my devices to feel like they cost a bit of money. If it were too light I think it would feel cheap.
I have the black unit and its a slight fingerprint magnet on the front. Now some may disagree, but I like it to look flawless at all time and I can notice them. Nothing a soft cloth can’t fix.
All and all I’m glad I upgraded. It’s a lovely reader and I like having something different than all those Kindle users out there. I’m very pleased.
2 Stars Screen and sofrtware problem
In addition to glaring problem of the screen that have already been mentioned by many reviewers, I’m really dissatisfied with the software provided for the Reader as well as eBook Library. I bought this product because I trusted a big name of Sony, but I’m really disappointed with this product. Basically you can only read e-books already uploaded and make notes on them with this Reader. That’s all. The e-Book library software through which you have to manage files of the Reader is also dumb. If you import files from external hard disk, you’ll get problem when you unplug the disk. When you arrange files into the collection, you’ll have double files, while you can not import directly the files into the collection. You can not also rename the files. Synchronizing is also problematic as no choice how to synchronize. It’s really dumb software. Sony should have prepared a more friendly user software before it launched this product.
2 Stars A Review From A Techie and A Technical Graduate Student – All About the Annotations
In my dreams, the PRS-600 was going to be the single source indexible, portable addition to my brain.
In reality, it falls short. Waaay short.
I have PDF copies of technical materials that I would love to annotate and export to Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. I use these materials as a software developer and CS grad student.
When you make highlights of texts in a PDF, one would think that you’d be able to export highlighted text. Nope. This is a major drawback if you want to take notes. Also, the stylus written annotations are in a format called .note Why not png? gif? jpg?
Also, the notes are not kept with each file, but in a central “notes” repository in the reader. If I am using this thing to take classes, I want my notes to be associated with that CLASS (and probably a specific DOCUMENT). I need a note classification system, which PRS-600 doesn’t have.
Zooming in on pages in PDF is painful. The six inch screen is too small to successfully duplicate the look and feel of a textbook, IMHO.
If you’re a scholar and you’re looking for an ereader with which to do serious research (read hundreds of pages and annotate them easily), and you *can* wait, I suggest you do at this point.
I wonder if Kindle DX (which is supposedly for the academic world) has any of these problems.
I bought this product at Crutchfields and they were great.
4 Stars Two steps forward one step back
Really good reader but two problems:
1. The screen is still not as clear as on old 505 and have some reflections.
2. The Page turn buttons are still located in a wrong place, touch is nice but for everyday use I prefer to have buttons I can use holding the device in one hand and not touching the screen. Like it was on 505 or at least on 500.
