Being a fan of Sony products all my life, I waited with keen anticipation for my Sony Reader to play with. After using the Kobo for the past two weeks I wanted to see what Sony had to offer. The Touch screen version was sent to me to review.

The reader had a 6-inch screen and provided an easy to use interface. It came with additional features that include a memo pad with touch keypad, a touch sketch/writing pad plus audio and photo storage.  The reader is based on the e- ink technology that is only available in B&W.



The Sony Reader Scorecard:
The gadgets in this blog for e-readers will be based on a scorecard and will be evaluated on these 4 criteria to arrive at the score.

Download Speeds – The Sony Reader Touch model requires you to plug in your reader to download books using a USB attachment. While it’s not as convenient as wifi I did not find it a big deal. It is as simple as transferring files onto a USB thumb drive.  Once they were downloaded they were transferred to my book folder on the device. You can download books from the Sony store and you can even get a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for $14.99.

Readability – Reading books on the device were a joy and I had a chance to read one on a trip by train to Montréal with no problem. I did find the device a little heavy after an extended period and I had to turn the pages often since it was smaller screen. I downloaded a magazine and text book in PDF to see how they would read and found it reminded me of reading microfiche in the university library of old newspapers.

Navigation – Simplicity is the key and the reader does dummy it down quiet nicely. The touch interface makes the Sony Reader a modern device as touch screens are becoming mainstream as they are now being seen in desktops, tablets and smart phones. Moving from page to page required you to click on forward and back buttons and you had five magnification sizes to choose from. There is a home page button where you can access all the functions.

Price/Feature Value – The Sony Touch model is advertised for $249 on the Sony Canada store. It has been reduced from $349 to compete against the Amazon Kindle. Sony attempted to add some features in their Swiss army knife product model like the photo storage that I found had minimal value, but I did like the memo and writing/sketch pad.

The Gadget Report Rating: 4 out of 5

While I am big fan of Sony, the reader lacks appeal to me for an everyday reader. This third generation reader obviously has a following, but lacked the screen size to read magazines and text books comfortably. My travel mate on the train to Montréal said that she would want a reader that enables her to read both books and magazines and color is very important in reading magazines.

Next Device: The Amazon Kindle DX Reader