Sony introduced on August 5 two new Readers. One of them, the Reader Pocket Edition will cost $199 (140 euros), making it the most affordable dedicated reading device on the market.
The Reader Pocket Edition sports a five-inch electronic paper display. The diminutive device can store about 350 standard eBooks and provides up to two weeks of reading on a single battery charge.
The Reader Touch Edition features a responsive, menu-driven six-inch touch screen panel that enables quick, intuitive navigation, page turning, highlighting and note taking with the swipe of a finger or by using the included stylus pen. Users can take handwritten notes with the stylus pen or type with the virtual keyboard. All notes can be exported and printed out for easy reference. The Touch Edition also offers five adjustable font sizes, as well as expansion slots for both Memory Stick® PRO Duo™ and SD card, making your portable library virtually limitless. It will retail for about $299.
The Reader Touch Edition also called PRS-600 (in red)
and on the right the Reader Pocket Edition.
Both models feature an E Ink® Vizplex™ electronic paper display that mimics the look of ink on paper. They will ship with an USB cable. Sony’s eBook Library software 3.0, which now includes support for many Apple® Macintosh® computers as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe® PDF (with reflow capability), Microsoft® Word®, BBeB® files, or other text file formats on the Reader.
Compared to the Amazon Kindle, the Sony readers still lack a wireless connection, but Sony assures that a WiFi version is coming soon.
