You’ve got to love Christmas. It’s a great excuse to get something you’ve wanted but haven’t been able to get for whatever reaso. In this case buying something that I’m only going a couple of times before it gets dusty. Well my thing this year was the Sony Reader 505 and I don’t think it’s going to get dusty anytime soon.
Ok, first things first. What is a Sony Reader? It’s an electronic device roughly the size of a UK literary paperback with a six-inch black and white (well black and grey) screen that lets you read electronic files in a similar way to a normal book. As well has that it can also play audio books and songs though the headphone socket though I’ve not tried that yet.
You might be thinking that the Sony Reader is limited and it is when compared to something like my iPhone and it is, especially since Stanza does a good job of turning the iPhone into an ereader. The big difference between the iPhone and the Sony Reader for me is the e-ink.
An Electronic Paper Display is a display that possess a paper-like high contrast appearance, ultra-low power consumption, and a thin, light form. It gives the viewer the experience of reading from paper, while having the power of updatable information.
EPDs are a technology enabled by electronic ink - ink that carries a charge enabling it to be updated through electronics. Electronic ink is ideally suited for EPDs as it is a reflective technology which requires no front or backlight, is viewable under a wide range of lighting conditions, including direct sunlight, and requires no power to maintain an image.
Source
In other words a display using e-ink is easy on the eyes and doesn’t need a lot of power – just enough to refresh/turn the page. This is one area where my iPhone lets me down. I’ve been using the Sony Reader for over a week and not needed to recharge it. My iPhone needs a daily charge seemingly regardless how much I use it. Though admittedly I am a heavy user of the wireless and internet capacity which rapidly drains the battery. And that is one of the strengths in the Sony Reader.
The lack of the unneeded bells and whistles means that the battery life is well used. If it had wireless, a backlight and was used to check email, download e-newspapers and other things not only would it need more charging it would also make it more complicated.
It took me less than two minutes to buy a copy of The Court of Air by Stephen Hunt and get it on my Sony Reader using WHSmith’s ebook site and Adobe Digital Editions.
It was just a case of drag and drop the downloaded book into the Sony Reader icon in Digital Editions, which downloaded automatically into Digital Editions after purchase.
I’ve not tried out Waterstones.com as WHSmith has a 50% sale and so I choose the cheapest option.
The other software is Sony’s eBook Library I’ve used it briefly to see what the 100 free classics looked like and to copy on The Divine Comedy and The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Not as pretty as Digital Editions but functional enough it seems.
One of the interesting challenges for the Sony Reader is going to be who going to pay £199 when you can pay £3.78 at Tesco for a paper?
Know that I’ve used it for a bit I’m a convert and I think that anybody that reads a lot of books would find it a good investment. It’s light and it’s easy to hold no matter how many pages the book contains. I finally bought a copy of Perdido Street Station as I’d been put off by the page count but now I’m going to give it a go.
The other thing that’s amazed me is that as far as I can tell all the major UK publishers are supporting the epub file format giving a wide range of books. It’s not an exhaustive list but you can find a wide selection of current and not so current releases and it’s getting strengthened all the time.
I’m also hoping that as epub format is going to be like the mp3 format and be universal enough that I’ll be able to use my downloaded books on a future ereader.
However saying that. How many times do you re-read a book once you’ve read them?
Ok, now the time for a few downsides. My Sony Reader is precious. At £199.00 I can’t just chuck in my bag like any other book though I would if I didn’t catch myself as its cover makes me forget the contents.
The page turns when the screen refreshes take a second or more. Slightly longer than it takes me to look from bottom to top so there is a bit of a pause. There is a longer pause between chapters as each chapter is a separate file that needs to be read before it’s comes up. The pause isn’t that noticeable but it is there.
The six inch screen might be a lightly too small in terms of lines per page. I find the medium text setting the best for me but older readers might choose the large option which may require more frequent page turns but then how many normal books can you make into large print at the touch of a button?
A couple of the books I’ve read aren’t formatted right and ‘internet’ formatting is one of the reasons I don’t read long HTML articles. Basically the paragraphing is scene-break paragraphing throughout. This makes the flow really hard and very un-book like. The same paragraphing as this blog post has. It’s alright for this style of writing but doesn’t work for me. The two books that I’ve come across so far are Thirteen Problems by Agatha Christie, which I bought and seriously considering complaining to HarperCollins about and the sample of The Book Thief. A bit more care and attention would help there I think.
Overall, I’m really impressed with the experience of reading ebooks on the Sony Reader 505. I am not a fan of reading on my computer, I’ve warmed to using Stanza on my iPhone but the Reader has been the most comfortable. I’ve read two books on it already and eager to start the next one.
Related Links:
First impressions Stanza the iPhone and Pan Macmillan
Tags: ebook, Sony Reader, Stanza
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