Review - Sony Pocket Reader

[wilderthan]

I've meant for a while to do a review of my ereader, since I kept getting questions about it when I got it. I have the Sony Pocket Reader, aka the PRS-300. Here are the specifications:

* Display: 5 inch.
* Resolution: 800 x 600 pixels
* Dimensions LxWxD (Approx.): 6 1/4 x 4 1/4 x 13/32 inches (Approx. 159x108x10 mm)
* Weight (Approx.): 7.76 oz
* Gray scale: 8-levels gray scale
* Internal Memory: 512MB, 440MB accessible
* Font Size: 3 adjustable font sizes
* Battery: Sealed internal, up to two weeks of reading on a single charge
* MSRP: US$199
* Available case colors:
o PRS-300BC: Navy Blue
o PRS-300RC: Rose Pink
o PRS-300SC: Silver

Mine is in silver and cost £180. Yeah, you get screwed by electronics and... everything in the UK, compared to the US. It is available for £150 in some locations, however. I suggest you don't get one straight from Sony. Shop around. It's a good bit of kit, as far as I'm concerned, but that's no reason to pay extra for it.

I've found the display perfectly adequate. You can make the text bigger twice. Often the first size is awful and way too small to read, but that's dependent on the original file. When you zoom in, that's usually adequate for reading in decent lighting conditions. My mother, even with her eye condition, agrees with that assessment. If you have bad eyesight, it can be made bigger than that again. I suggest if you do have trouble with eyesight, go and ask to see one -- they have some books on them already which you can use to gauge the text size. I haven't read comics or anything on mine, so I don't know how the display is for that -- greyscale, as it says above -- but quite clear. The Pocket Reader does not come with a backlight. The screen is such that it's easy to read even in direct sunlight, etc, but the lack of backlight is the one irritation. The screen doesn't seem to be prone to scratches, or to attracting dirt -- in fact, my ereader still basically looks like new.

In terms of the battery, I've found 'two weeks of reading' is accurate only when you don't read very much. I half-drained the battery in one fell swoop on a train journey. However, casually reading a little bit a day, it could last for ages. Charging it can be quite annoying, as the only thing that comes with it in that line is a USB cable. I've bought a mains charger for it and that seems to charge it faster than the USB cable, which is worth it, but it's an irritating extra charge on top of an already expensive bit of kit.

It's quite lightweight, easy to hold -- certainly easier than most books -- and while I wouldn't exactly call it pocket-size, it's just as transportable as a book, if not more. If you have big pockets, say in a winter coat, then it should slip in there. It comes with a protective sleeve type thing which seems to keep it safe.

The software that comes with it was awkward to use and I didn't get on with it. I found it often gave me duplicates of the same book on the reader, when you let it synchronise, you couldn't directly delete books from the reader, and you couldn't alter the metadata of your books. I recommend Calibre, which doesn't even seem to have reached a full version yet -- I've got version 0.6.31 -- but lets you control the books directly, edit metadata, etc. The one problem so far is that it's quite slow and sometimes seems to mess up the formatting of metadata on the ereader. I haven't had any other problems with it, really, and I can imagine it will only get better.

Comments

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

*thinks*

I'm not sure if it's the future of reading or the thing that will eventually destroy my job, but it's out there. :-) And that's the version that Borders likes, so I hope it treats you kindly.

[wilderthan.livejournal.com]

I'm not a good indicator -- I love the smell/feel of real pages, and largely use my reader to read stuff that's old/can be got for free/is too expensive to collect in 'real' copies. I love ereaders very much because they give my mother books for longer, so...