Foreword:

Sony Reader PRS-600 is Sony’s replacement for PRS-700 (with only front light feature missing). Also known as “Touch Edition” this device is available in various colors. It uses an electronic paper display and can be viewed easily in direct sunlight. It requires very little power and hence can go without charge for quite a long time (around 2 weeks). It supports PDF, ePUB, TXT and RTF, easy touch screen UI and advanced note-taking features. The touchscreen and stylus can be used for navigating and for creating drawings and handwritten notes.

This reader has five thin silvery bar-shaped buttons having two situated on the far left are for turning pages forward and back; the center button brings up the main menu; the fourth button produces a pop-up screen for changing font size and the fifth one on the far right.

The screen technology is too opaque for backlight hence decent amount of ambient or book light is required to read. The touch screen interface is quite intuitive. It offers a fantastic battery life as it supports USB charging and charging via the optional AC adapter. It comes with a Reader, stylus, USB cable, neoprene sleeve and quick start pamphlet as additional.

+Ves:

• Minimal glare
• The video covers features of dictionary, drawing, and page turn speed, PDF rendering and zooming.
• Words are crispy clear and no parallax effect created by the touch screen layer
• Suitable for graphics, 8 shades of gray are displayed by reader.
• Built in dictionary supporting US English, French, German and Dutch
• Built in MP3 player with a decent-quality audio and a good range of volume over earphones
• Ability to read multiple formats.
• The audio and images formatted supported by it includes MP3 and DRM-free AAC(for audio) and JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP(for video)

-Ves:

• No wireless i.e. WiFi and Bluetooth
• Heavy weight for the user
• Smaller screen as compared to that required for text book reading

Final Word:

This product supports ePub that is very useful in the digital book realm. Though, at a price of $300 it is costlier than many other e-book readers, it is also one of the best designed and most full-featured devices. With an inbuilt dictionary and stylus for creating notes it provides the feel of actual textbook. Thus with touch screen and enough formats for both audio and images it turns out to a good buy.