Sony Saves the Earth and Your Eyes with the Sony Reader

I know with all of the recent fanfare of the next generation gaming consoles that books are probably not topping everyone’s Christmas list but Sony’s new digital book Reader may change all of that. The Sony Reader is yet another product to try and fill the ‘digital book’ dream but it may just live up to its expectations. The screen uses new digital ink technnology and has a highly readable and high contrast screen. Here’s some specs:

The Sony® Reader provides a new way to experience reading. It boasts an impressive display¹, utilizing breakthrough technology that’s almost paper-like. In addition, the text can be magnified for sight-impaired readers. Daylight readable, high contrast, high resolution, near 180º viewing angle.

Measuring 6.9” by 4.9” by .5”,8 the Sony® Reader is smaller than many paperbacks. And at about 9 ounces,⁸ it’s light enough to travel with you wherever you go. Its rechargeable battery powers you through up to 7,500 page turns,² so you’re ready for the long haul, and can be recharged in as little as 4 hours with the AC adapter.

A very compact and light design you can take almost anywhere. And with 64MB of internal memory⁹, and a slot for optional removable memory cards you can take many titles, user-selected Web content, or other supported documents for reading on the go.

I saw one of these in my local Borders and I was very impressed by the small size and light weight. It is very thin and the screen is very bright and the text is extremely sharp. It has the same size as a normal book and the controls were very easy to use. You download books from the web through Sony’s Connect service and the reader also supports plain text and PDF format documents.

The only problem with this is the price tag of 350 bucks. (This is Sony after all) However, a lot of the books can be had for less than 50% of the price if you were to buy the paperback version. I checked a few books that I recently bought for 15 bucks and I could of gotten the digital version for only 5 dollars. So if you read two books a month at a normal cost of 15 dollars a book you could save 20 dollars a month and hence pay off the reader in 18 months.

The Sony Reader is the first digital book device that I would consider trading in my trusty book light and paperback for. Although it has a steep price, if you are an avid reader then this device would pay itself off in a little over a year. As long as Sony can put out enough variety in its online book selection, this could be a big winner.