A few days ago I made a post singing the praises of the Barnes & Noble Nook. I should be getting mine in the mail tomorrow, and I stand by my decision to get one, but I thought it only fair to give some of the other eReaders on the market some time and attention here on NeoLibrarium. After all, I’m not here to sell you anything, but to review books, discuss books, and take a long hard look at anything new, different, or just interesting in the world of books.
Today we’ll take a look at the Sony Reader Touch Edition (Model # PRS600SC). The Touch has apparently been through a few other incarnations, including models 505 and 700, but where each of those were flawed the 600 seems to have made progress to the point where most owners are satisfied.
For starters, and as apparent in its name, the Touch has a 6″ touchscreen display. This allows for easy navigation, page turning, and it comes with a stylus for highlighting, note taking, and drawing. A double-tap can look a word up for you in the device’s included New Oxford American Dictionary and there are five font sizes.
While the 6″ screen is pretty standard among eReaders the part where it is a touchscreen is fairly unique. The downside to the touchscreen is, from what I understand, a potential for sluggish reaction time and less contrast on screen. The Sony Pocket, for example, has a crisply white screen just like a page in a book where the Touch has a light gray screen – probably not noticeable to users, but apparent when the devices are placed side-by-side. This I know not just from reviews, but because by going to Borders bookstores and playing with the display models I noticed the difference for myself. Reviews confirmed this so now I know that it isn’t just the specific device I toyed with, but a flaw noticeable in all such units.
Now, the display technology is still quite good. It features an E Ink display – again, fairly common, but consistently good – and works with 8-level grayscale. Some devices feature 16-level grayscale, but hey, it’s all shades of gray to me!
The memory onboard the device is only 512MB, enough for about 750 books according to the sonystyle.com website. However, there is the option to expand storage with up to 300MB Dual Memory, or with an SD Card (up to 16 GB, if you’re hardcore).
Two big advantages for users who are tech-savvy are: the number of supported file formats, and the fact that the Sony eReaders are not proprietary. The Touch supports Adobe PDF, MS Word, BBeB Book, EPUB/ACS4, MP3/AAC, TXT, RTF, JPEG, BMP, and PNG files. The fact that audio files are supported means that yes, folks, this eReader falls into the listen-while-you-read category, which is a big plus in my book. In fact, but for price and the dim screen, I may have gone for this over the Nook! As for the fact that this is not a  proprietary device, that means you don’t have to go through Sony for your ebooks. The not-so-great part is that B&N and some other readers are proprietary and they encrypt their ebooks, making those files incompatible ( in theory ) with other devices. Bummer.

The Sony Touch does fall behind a few other eReaders in that it does not have wireless access. To download books, you must have a “wired” connection to your PC. This makes the Sony Touch a little less than desirable to those whose lives have them constantly on-the-go and away from their home computers. Business travelers, for example, may want to nix this reader simply because you have to be able to sit down and plug in any time you want new content.  On the other hand, with expandable storage, you could just download whatever you want before you get going so that potential downside may not be devastating.

Reviews online have also revealed to me the downside of the Sony Touch’s enclosed battery. I did notice when purchasing the Nook that there was an option to buy a separate battery – a chargeable backup that I could switch out with the battery that will come with the Nook. The enclosed battery on the Sony Touch means that it can’t be switched out like that. This would not be deal breaker for me, but it is a little inconvenient if you use your eReader with enough frequency that charging it is annoyingly time-consuming. (I still haven’t seen how long it takes for a full charge…)

For carrying, the Sony Touch weighs in at about 10 ounces. (For reference, 1 lb. = 16 oz.) This is about the same weight as the Kindle and lighter than the Nook by about two ounces. I’m not sure how much the average mass-market paperback weighs, but I doubt that these eReaders are cumbersome enough to snap our wrists or cause tendonitis. Heartlessly I say to you: get a wrist brace if you’re worried about it.

The Sony Touch – like the Nook – also supports library ebooks! I have not had the chance to explore how exactly this works on any device, but there’s a library just a few blocks North of where I live so I’ll let you know once I’ve got my Nook operational!

(As a sidenote, I thank God for the libraries here and the fact that they are offering ebooks for geeks like me is a wonderful thing, so support your local library, will you?)

For navigation, almost everything is done through the touchscreen on the Sony Reader Touch, but there are actual buttons on the device for navigation and page turning so if your touchscreen is slow to respond (and the display models are devastatingly slow) you can always punch the hard key to get things done.

There is also an option for landscape vs. portrait orientation on screen. Personally, I think that it is a pro for any device, but I also can’t decide exactly how this is advantageous. Surely it is. Somehow it must be – and if not, well it’s still really neat!

So, pros of the Sony Touch are:

1) 6″ touch screen E Ink display with 5 font sizes, with options to highlight, take notes, and look up words

2) Battery life is, like most devices, about two weeks.

3) The Sony Touch supports several file formats, including MS Word, TXT, RTF and others. It is not proprietary, so you can add what you like, though some files from some vendors may be encrypted to prevent this.

4) The Touch supports two audio formats, which means you can listen to music while you read. (For extra fun, format an audiobook to an mp3 and read along while you listen.)

5) The Touch allows for tons of extra storage so you can download as many books as you feel necessary, though if you’re really hardcore you may need to switch SD Cards to access it all.

6) For the aesthete, this reader comes in three colors: red, silver, and black. So, it can be pretty. This is comparable with some features in other devices ( for example interchangeable back covers on the Nook) but it remains pretty unique to Sony.

The Cons:

1) Users have griped about slow response times, and the touchscreen could be more of a nuisance on that front than a blessing of technology.

2) The battery is enclosed. No switcheroonies if you lose charge on your device.

3) Display is only 8-level grayscale vs 16 on other devices, and the contrast is not as good as it is on other devices.

4) It is not a wireless device. You must have a PC connection to download your ebooks. Also, some users have said that USB charging only works with a PC – so that handy device that plugs into your car lighter or wall outlet may not work.

5) The cost for the Touch is $199. This doesn’t make it the most expensive models of eReader on the market, but it does price it evenly with the Nook Wi-Fi + 3G which (obviously) has Wi-Fi and 3G connections…and other similarly priced devices have more features.

All in all, the Sony Touch is not a bad value, though I can’t say it’s the best value on the market and believe myself. It is a good value for what it is and what it does, but its limitations (as listed above) make it a question for consumers of what they find personally necessary in their eReader. As I mentioned before, if not for the price (and the cons I listed) I may have gotten a Sony Touch rather than the Nook.

Tags: eReader, eReaders, review of Sony Touch Edition, Sony 600, Sony eReader, Sony PRS600, Sony PRS600SC, Sony Reader pros and cons, Sony Reader Touch Edition