The Sony Reader PRS-600 is now available for order at Amazon for $299. At today’s (Aug 25th) Press Conference Sony announced you can order it.
Although Sony is not touting it as such, the PRS-600 with its $299 price is a direct competitor to the Kindle 2. Sony Reader PRS-600 comes in with its Touch capability and Kindle 2 has wireless access and free Internet access.
Sony Reader Touch Edition – Review Video, Leaked Manual
A Sony Reader Touch Edition video review –
Here’s a quick video covering the leaked manual -
It seems it’ll be a worldwide release - US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Netherlands.
The sources the revealed details of the Sony PRS-600 were –
- August 2nd: JR.com briefly put up the Sony Reader PRS 600 Touch Edition for preorder. The Sony Reader 600′s price was listed at $299.
- A user at the Sony Insider Forums found the Sony Reader PRS 600 manual. The Sony Reader 600 has some cool features and is a strong play by Sony.
Sony Reader PRS 600 – Key Features
- Reasonable Price – $299.
- TouchScreen – confirmed from manual.
- It mentions MP3 encoding technology which hints at a voice recording or voice memo function.
- Might be flexible – the board for touchscreen, eInk, and back pane all say ‘flexible’ in the manual. Could this be a flexible, unbreakable screen?
- Excellent Font Support – It comes with an in-built Font Fusion Engine from BitStream that supports Chinese, Korean, Japanese. It also claims to support ANY font. The default fonts look good (these are fonts on my PC, these are NOT on the Sony) -
Sony Reader PRS 600 Default Fonts
- Extendible memory – The manual indicates SD Card and Memory Stick Duo are both supported.
- Very compact – It’s 4.87″ by 6.87″ by .4 inches. That’s roughly 11 cm by 17.4 cm by .98 cm.
- No wireless support although it is planned down the line.
Another big bonus is that Sony will be matching Kindle $9.99 prices on new releases and on bestsellers.
Sony Reader PRS-600 – Details
- 6 inch screen.
- 8 levels of grayscale and 800 by 600 resolution.
- Very light at 10.1 oz (286 g). Very thin at .4″.
- Sony Reader 600 will be available in Red, Black and Silver.
- Has a touchscreen. The panel below the screen might be touch sensitive buttons (which would be cool).
- Freehand highlighting and annotation – apparently its free hand writing with a stylus.
- Built-in Dictionary support.
- Innovative eLibrary software that supports Windows and Macintosh.
- Can be charged via AC adapter or USB.
- Sony Reader 600 has 380 Mb of storage capacity.
- It also has SD Card and Memory Stick Duo support.
- Battery Life of the Sony Reader 600 is 7,500 pages.
The picture used for the manual is rather drab – However the press release has much better images -
Sony Reader PRS 600 - Silver, Red and Black
The Sony Reader 600 manual in PDF at Google Docs. Or if you want to check it out on your Kindle, the Kindle format Sony 600 manual.
Sony Reader 600 – An Impressive Reader
The Sony Reader PRS 600 is definitely the high end, ‘looking for a fight with the Kindle’ eReader. Its official name is the Sony Reader PRS 600 Touch Edition and the support for freehand writing is pretty cool.
- The fact that it’s at just $299 is impressive. Super agressive pricing by Sony.
- No Wireless Support.
- The testing mode has a ‘draw on the screen’ mode which indicates Sony might have improved refresh speed somehow (not a given).
- There is very little wasted real estate. It’s all screen and it seems it’ll be super compact for a 6″ screen ereader.
- There are some buttons right at the lower edge of the screen. Not sure if there are touch controls above it. There is an on-screen touch keyboard.
The Sony 600 is a very impressive device. There are just a lot of good, solid features. At $299 it matches the Kindle 2 on pricing and will give Kindle 2 a solid run for its money.
Filed under: sony reader | Tagged: sony reader, sony reader touch edition
This definitely looks impressive. I’ve completely worn out two PDA’s reading hundreds of romance e-books.
Something like this sounds right up my alley.
Cassidy
If they come in at $299 that’ll be a real battle, and with their PDF support, guess which one will likely come out on top even without the 24/7 free wireless, which doesn’t matter to the people who’ve resisted the Kindle so far. With Wifi in homes and offices, this will be seen as darn useful, and the UK market will sure like it too.
I wonder how they solved the readability problem with the touch screen? I guess we’ll be reading a lot more.
Sounds very interesting. Thanks, switch11.
they’ve removed the side-light. that supposedly contributed partly to the readability problem.
in terms of the touch-screen it seems to still be on top of the eInk so not sure how they’re avoiding impact on light reflection.
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Touch and the minimal size and styling are just what’s needed. If this comes to the UK at a reasonable price (>£300) it’ could finally push me off the fence (the KIndle with its clunky styling and button blitz has never really been a starter, whatever its downloading advantages).
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Thanks for the head’s up on this. I’ve been on the fence between Kindle and Sony and was leaning towards Kindle. After seeing this, I might have to wait again;) I still don’t understand why Sony hasn’t come out with wireless downloads. If they did, they’d kill Kindle – IMHO.
Robert
P.S. On a completely different note, can I ask you what camcorder you use to make all your videos? The audio and video is so sharp and clear.
the camcorder is the kodak zi6. its pretty good and its macro mode rocks.
you should be able to get one at dell or amazon for $150-$170.
also the monitor helps (i use a second monitor on my hp touchsmart) – it’s a Dell 2209WA. it’s reasonably cheap ($230 or so) and it uses eIPS technology for a much better picture.
Thanks for the camcorder info! I’ve been looking for a small, affordable camcorder to do closeups and haven’t been able to find anything. I was a huge fan of the Flip Ultra but it can’t do closeups at all.
Keep up the great work on the blog! I’ll be waiting for you to review the new Sony readers when they come out. I’ll be interested to see what you think of it compared to the Kindle!
Robert
I was interested to see the video. However, I was disappointed to see that Sony have still not resolved the reflection issues that made their previous touch screen model pretty well unusable. I’ve had a Sony 505 for more than a year and I’m very happy with it. I had the previous touch screen model (700?) for about two days. Although it worked well it was impossible to read because of the reflectivity of the screen. I could have used it as a mirror to shave myself. I was hoping the new model would have fixed this but, judging by the video in which the camera can clearly be seen, it seems not. A pity.
Does the sony reader 600 support a format that allows you to download Kindle books?
no. Kindle books can only be read on Kindles because of the proprietary format.
After reading the many posts on this site, I purchased the Sony PRS-600. I like it, but it is not great. The former post about wireless connectivity is definately on the mark. Sony did the right thing wrong, if they had included wireless connectivity this would be one hot reader. I like the functionality, easy to use, and intuitive. The keyboard is silly, and not practical to use. When you get to the “Text Memo” window, I (foolishly) expected to be able to write with the sylus, but the only way to enter text is with the keyboard that looks like they have combined the size of a Blackberry, and a regular keyboard into a mid-size mess. The “Handwriting” selection I like (it would have been better with horizontal lines to keep my writing at least a little neater, like the “Text Memo” window). But, it does work well, you can easily write, or draw anything with good results. Erasing is a no-brainer, simple and easy to do. My last comment is the pictures…why can’t they be in color???…sheesh…the black and white pictures (grayscale) are detailed; however, unappealing at best.
That’s it guys and gals….you may not agree, but overall, like the Sony…my only real complaint is that Sony should have gone the extra mile with wireless, and color would have been really, really nice. Oh, did I forget to mention there is no way to hear music without ear-buds? aaarrrrrrrrrgggggg!!!!
Wireles is now here. $399. Available around December 18th.
I’ve had one of these for about 2 months. It’s been a fantastic purchase. The screen glare doesn’t bother me. In direct sunlight there is no glare and if in doors with light I just angle it slightly and it’s fine. I love the touch screen and text memo features. I don’t have any problems with the keybord feature… I just change the orentation to landscape and it give me a larger keyboard to work with. Highly recommend.
I am afraid the Free Internet access is not true, I thought so at the beginning and I was about to buy it… when I read that you only have free access to the amazon store, if wanting to access anything else you’d need to pay something else, probably a monthly quote, and for that, I’d get an Iphone…
Internet is free in the US. There is no monthly quota.
Just bought my new reader. Looking for info on how to use download audio books. Do I need to add anything?
To play music do I need to download anything.
Can I transfer music to a memory card and just insert in slot and play, or do i haveto buy off line.
Jes, you can find the manual here – http://www.sony.co.uk/product/rd-reader-ebook/prs-600/tab/manual/type/video
It’s the PDF listed below the video.
Basically unsecured (i.e. DRM free) mp3 and aac files show up in the audio player – even if they are on the memory card.
then you can play whatever you want.
The mp3 music you have should work – It won’t work if it’s Apple music from when they had DRM – the new DRM free Apple AAC files are supported.
No instructions with purchase.