Sony Reader Touch Edition: a beauty except the screen

Since I really enjoyed the Sony software on the Sony PRS-700, and Sony Pocket Edition, and many reviews claimed it was better than the PRS-700, I succumbed and bought a Sony Reader Touch Edition (model PRS-600). The Touch runs $169 new, $159 refurbished, but steals can be had on eBay right now, averaging $120-150, depending on what accessories are included.

My take on the Touch after using it for over two weeks:

Design:
I enjoy the quality of the design - the metal front and back, responsive buttons that make nearly silent clicks, the perfect centering/balancing of the navigation buttons, make it a joy to hold and use.

Touchscreen:
The Touchscreen integrates well with the Sony software – large “buttons” to push to navigate and select. It requires a little more pressure than the Nook LCD screen, but is more responsive.

Contrast:
I have no idea why people say the Touch is better than the PRS-700. It is highly readable in indirect natural lighting, and in the dark with a book light, but lousy in direct lighting, due to excessive glare. With overhead lighting, all I can see are the lights, which makes it useless at work. With side lighting, all I can see is my reflection. A major disappointment, made worse when directly compared to the Nook or Pocket.

Lighting:
There is no built-in lighting, which is standard for an e-Ink device. I have used it with the Sony Reader Cover with Light (PRSA-CL6), an M-Edge eLuminator2 light (Nook/PRS-900 model), and a few cheap dollar store clip-ons. There is a tendency toward hot spots if you point any light directly at the screen. I get more even lighting by pointing towards it from the side.

Speed:
Page turns are speeder than the Nook and Pocket. I suspect it is the fastest e-Ink device out there. The standard flash is almost non-existent. Turning on the device is instantaneous, since it really goes into sleep, not off (unless you force it off by holding the power button for longer). I love being able to flick the switch and start reading in less than 2 seconds - take that Nook with its 7-10 second wakeup, and let’s not talk about launching reader apps on the iPhone…

Connectivity
No WiFi or 3G on the Touch. I kind of miss the convenience of impulse purchasing, but for the tradeoff of Calibre tags, it is worth it.

Software:
I would rate the Sony as above average, for the eReading device market. It doesn't do everything I wish it would did, but it does a heck of a lot more than all the others do in terms of organization. Just like the PRS-700 was laid out to provide a useful touch interface, the Touch’s software utlitizes the touchscreen and buttons on the bottom efficiently. Books can be sorted by Title, Author or Collections. They can also be sorted by (loaded) Date, which I haven't found particularly useful, but its there. The best feature remains the Collections feature - the ability to utilize my meticulously tagged series from Calibre is awesome. My one complaint is that books on the internal memory and books on the SD card are sorted separately.

The Touch has a handy dictionary feature, which allows you to highlight a word with the stylus and look it up in the dictionary, or make a note. Not critical features for me, but they were nice to have. The Touch’s dictionary is superior to the Nook’s, which has a limited word selection. The Touch has a Go To page feature, which I must have when using multiple readers. My only real complaints are that there is no clock (gotta have something to remind me when I'm caught up reading until 2am) and you can't have more than one book in the Continue Reading option - I often have 2-3 books going at one time, so I have to remember which ones they are. Sony should make this a menu, and you can select from the last 5 books opened, or up to 5 books that are open to midway pages, not the end.

The reading software reads ePub and PDF DRM formats. I believe it also uses LRF non-DRM, but I have not tried that format. The standard font is a serif and is attractive. There are 5 sizes. I’d like more options, but the ones that are there are serviceable. There is a zoom feature for going in closer on PDFs, but I don’t have much use for this as I mostly read text-only PDFs that reflow reasonably well on the Touch.

The desktop software is Sony Reader. Just don't go there. It is buggy and slow on a Mac, crashing about every third time. I haven't even bothered using it with the Touch, since it was so miserable with the PRS-700. Calibre does an excellent job, so its no loss.

Ergonomics:
I really enjoy using the Touch one-handed, thanks to the touchscreen for page turns. It feels great in hand, well-balanced because I choose where to hold it, not where the buttons are. , and with perfect placement of the buttons. I find it easy to hold and navigate using the bottom buttons without my wrist getting tired. It weights 10.1 oz according to Sony's website, and that seems about right.

I did use the Touch in both the Sony Premium Cover (sold separately), and the Sony Cover with Light(sold separately). I prefer the device naked over the Premium cover, but I did like holding the Light cover – the battery/light compartment provided a nice grip for the left hand, w hich still allowing for easy use of the touchscreen with my thumb. I suspect it would also work well in an easel-style case like the M-Edge Platform Jacket, but I didn’t test this.

Storage
This is the the Touch’s other weakness. There is only 500MB storage, which is wimpy compared to the Nook’s 2GB and the Kindle’s 1GB. Although there is a SD and MemoryStick slot, the software sorts them separately in Collections and SD card use usually drains a device faster than internal memory.

Conclusion:
I read in bed, I read in the car, I read at work, I read on the couch. All told, I think I have spent 40 hours reading on this device over a several weeks. Thanks to the superior Reader Cover with Light, it could have been the perfect reader to entirely replace my iPhone in all situations, if only it didn’t have that awful screen glare. Instead, I have to look elsewhere or consider it as a night-time-only reader.

For now, the device hunt continues – I just received a Bookeen Cybook Opus from eBay that I need to put through its paces.