Content:

There are really three distinct sights for getting books for Sony Readers. Sony’s own Reader Store has expanded rapidly but falls short of the Amazon’s mammoth selection of titles for Kindle. Books are, nonetheless, priced competitively with most bestsellers going for around $10. There are frequent promotions which often make select offerings for as low as $1.

Secondly, Sony has teamed with Google Books which has over a million books in the public domain that are entirely free. You won’t find brand new material here but it’s an absolutely invaluable source for older classics and rarities.

Finally, more and more books are being made available by public libraries in the EPUB format and can be loaned for 21 days. The quantity of titles available is somewhat limited but expanding rapidly. It’s almost as good as being able to go to the library 24 hours a day without ever leaving home.

The PRS-600 doesn’t have the ability to download over the air like Kindles and the Barnes and Noble Nook do. That’s one of the principle drawbacks of this device. Loading books onto the Reader requires first downloading them to a PC or Mac then syncing with the included USB cable. The process isn’t at all difficult but we like having the over the air option.

A strong point of Sony Readers is their ability to display numerous industry standard formats. The can display DRM content from other sites in PDF, Word, BBeB, EPUB/ADEPT and Adobe Digital Editions.

Memory/Battery Life:

The device has 512MB of internal storage of which about 480MB are actually available to the user. That will hold up to about 350 typical eBooks. That can be expanded by the addition of a Memory Stick PRO or SDHC card with up to 16GB capacity, so in reality, with enough memory cards, storage is unlimited.

The battery, unfortunately, isn’t user replaceable though indications are that replacement shouldn’t be frequent given its estimated two week battery life between charging.

Additional Features:

Photographs can be loaded onto the Reader as can MP3 and AAC audio files. This allows for listening to music or recoded books in those formats. The device doesn’t have text to speech functionality. For headphones, there’s a standard 3.5mm jack.

Sony offers technical support for eBook readers via telephone, email and live online chat. The unit comes with just a quick start guide but a full user’s manual is available online in PDF format. In general, the device is simple enough that user support isn’t too likely to be necessary.

Summary:

We were impressed with the overall quality of the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-600. It’s surprisingly solid despite its diminutive size and slight weight. It’s exceptionally easy to use and even a first time eBook user should be able to enjoy it within minutes. The screen, though an improvement on its predecessor, still has some problems with reflectivity and we’d like to see slightly better contrast; nonetheless, the unit is very easy to read in general and most worthy of consideration when shopping for an eBook reader.