Sony PRS-600 Reader Touch Edition Review – a bargain revisit

Rating: 8.5.

Apple's iPad has dominated the press this year, with incredible sales figures verifying that there is a huge market for easy to use, portable devices. I will hold my hand up and say I use an iPad regularly, from reading the Times newspaper every morning to playing with latest games and applications on the iTunes Store.

As with any technological gadget is it only after months of use that you begin to really get to grips with the strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately I have found one rather major weakness and that is when I want to read books. It is not that the applications are poor, or that the device is slow – it just hurts my eyes after 30 minutes of staring at text. There are however some very clever alternatives to the iPad, built specifically for reading books.

Today we are going to look at the Sony PRS 600, Sony's follow up to the PRS 505, a fantastic eBook reader which was released in 2008. The PRS 600 was released almost a year ago, but as people are really catching on to electronic books we have noticed stores such as PC WORLD are stocking them in the UK. As the model has been phasing out, huge stores such as Play.com are selling them for £159.99 inc vat, down £110 from when they where released.

Is this a device that makes a good value for money purchase in 2010?

• Key Features:
• Store up to 350 eBooks (13,000 with extra memory card)
• 6″ E Ink Vizplex touch-screen for the ultimate reading experience
• Advanced Features: annotations, search & in-built English dictionary
• Sleek aluminium design plus choice of colours, covers, & reading lights
• Long battery charge for around 7500 page turns
• Specifications:
• Display Screen:
• Technology: E Ink Vizplex touchscreen
• Screen size (inch): 6
• Resolution: 800×600 (h/w)
• Grey scale: 8-level grey scale
• Storage Capacity:
• Built in flash memory (MB): 512 (Approx. 350 eBooks)
• MemoryStick MS DUO slot: Yes
• SD Card Slot: Yes
• Power:
• Battery Type: Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery: DC 3.7 V
• Battery Life (reading EPUB eBooks): Approx 7500 page turns
• Recharging Time: Four hours with USB, two hours with optional AC charger
• Compatible Formats:
• Unsecured / free eBooks & text files: EPUB eBook, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, TXT, RTF, BBeB
• DRM (Secure / purchased) eBooks and text files: EPUB eBooks (Adept) BBeB eBooks (Marlin)
• Unsecured Audio files: MP3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
• Image & Photo files: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Supplied Accessories:
• Soft cover: Pouch
• USB Cable: Yes
• Quick Start guide: Yes
• eBook Library software: Yes
• Recommended Minimum System Requirements:
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) or Microsoft Windows XP (32-bit only), MAC OS X 10.4.9 or later
• Processor: 800 MHz Intel Celeron class processor or better
• RAM: 128 MB minimum, or 512 MB minimum for Windows Vista
• Hard Drive: 20 MB Minimum available Hard Drive space
• Optical Drive: Capable of reading CD-ROM
• USB Port: USB 2.0 high speed
• Internet Connection: Broadband
• Dimensions:
• Width (mm): 121
• Height (mm): 174.3
• Depth (mm): 9.8
• Weight (g): 286

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