Sony says the Reader is selling 'very well,' thank you very much, isn't planning color versions
By Tim Stevens 
posted January 29th 2010 9:37AM
posted January 29th 2010 9:37AM
posted January 29th 2010 9:37AM
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if a dollar was donated to haiti for every iPad mention on engadget Haitians would be going "what earthquake?" by now -__-'
@skyblaze
They'd be "what earthquake?" on their iphones and in emails on their macbooks :)
@skyblaze And the Haitians just thanked you. You just donated a dollar.
Are you guys being sarcastic? iPad is a major failure. If a dollar is donated for every iPad sold, Haitians would die of starvation.
Sony should really up the ante since Apple has already failed. but by the time Sony reacts, Samsung would have gotten away with an even better product.
@darkmax
You would've just donated $2.
@skyblaze
So in your world, a thousand bucks cleans up an Earthquake and undoes thousands upon thousands of dead and wounded.
Wow. Dude. Pass the pipe.
@Wesscoast
it was a joke. chill. btw i donated to haiti. did you?
Still my favourite out of all the e-reader devices. My PRS-600 is solid, quick, and (with the help of calibre) provides me with pretty much anything I want to read. True, the screen could stand to be a touch sharper, but that's the price you pay for touch screen functionality at the moment, I guess.
Colour e-ink doesn't particularly grab me as I don't often read comics or magazines, but it will be nice to see what devices can do in a year or two.
@Cocytean
I have a little trouble telling all models apart, not jusr from sony but sony is a good example.
@Cocytean I have a PRS-505 and like you I find it indispensible. They are very cheap now as well: I got mine for well under £120.
@Cocytean
I got my girlfriend a PRS-600 for Christmas and she wasn't completely in love with it because of the glare from the touchscreen overlay. She traded hers in for a Kindle2 and she really loves it even though she can't hand write in the margins (although she can type post-it notes on the pages). She brought it down last weekend and I got to see it for the first time and I must say that the kindle2's screen is hands down better than the PRS-600. I know the touchscreen capabilities are really awesome, but in an e-reader the quality of the screen is the most important thing IMHO. When I was using her PRS-600 prior to returning it, I kept feeling that in order for there to be no glare I had to sit in a particular spot which was a deal breaker for us.
@ZSX I got mine for £150 about a year ago. Unfortunately it was stolen and the price has now actually increased to around £200. Where'd you get yours?
Just tried the sony site, they only have info in the latest 3 models, and I see the pocket edition doesn't have memory card slots, and if touch has the reported less clear text that's too annoying (everybody mentions it showing that it's very noticeable and it would probably annoy me personally), so you'd need an older model I guess.
@Rick James
Yeah, Sony has really messed up their products. Killing the 505 was a mistake. The 300 is the same screen type as the 505 and Kindle but just smaller. If you want a Sony 6" e-ink you are stuck with a glossy touch screen version now. While it has some nice features, the #1 reason for these devices is to read books and that glare takes away significantly from it when you've seen under glass e-ink
I'd love a touchscreen color ereader for mainly one reason; web browsing. I spend several hours a day reading news sites, online magazines and tech blogs and my eyes feel the pain. I wonder why everyone seems to think web surfing is free of eye strain. If only someone developed an e- ink technology as good as in the movie babylon. Sigh!
@Cocytean
Agreed. My PRS-600 is fabulous for so many reasons. I can easily make notations and mark up bits of text as well as check dictionary definitions of words I don't understand with a simple double-touch on the screen. It's many times better for academic work than I had expected it to be.
However, the technology is still not quite there. I wish it had higher resolution (1200 x 900 would be delicious) as well as better contrast and ideally 2 times faster screen refresh rates. Once those are in place, I wouldn't hesitate for a second in recommending it to anyone and everyone. As it is, I do still love it, but wouldn't try to push it on someone who wasn't already interested.
@Cocytean I agree, though if I'd known about the touchscreen overlay issues before buying I might have gone with the non-touch model, it is a bit of a pain avoiding the glare and I don't really use the touchscreen features. That's really my fault, though, for not picking carefully enough. It's exactly the right device for me: it's a book reader, it's not anything else and it's not trying to be. I don't really want the data tether that comes with the Kindle - I'm perfectly happy transferring books by USB, and this way they can't be taken off me again later... - it's not a web browser, I don't want a keyboard on the thing. It just feels exactly right for carrying around with me instead of an awkward, bigger and easily-damaged paperback. I've really liked mine from the day I bought it.
@Cocytean
I totally agree. I got mine sent from America (I'm in New Zealand) and have found it really good. Not too sure about the 'glare problem' as I can read it in day-light without a problem.
Also, very VERY happy with Calibre.
@Cocytean
Sony eReaders are done for thanks to Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos.
@MosesusedaniPad
Uh, no. Sony had a reader before Kindle was around, and I don't even know where you think Jobs comes into this.
I use mine when I'm travelling or at coffee bars for making annotations and edits on articles I'm preparing for publication. It's an excellent tool. The good battery life means I don't have to worry about my laptop or netbook running down during the proofreading stage, and it allows me to make notes on the fly. I don't see the iPad improving much on that functionality, though the HP Slate might.
@millsy I'm in Spain. Sunny days make the screen crystal clear, reading in poor lighting or with a spotlight of some kind is a pain. Fortunately I spend most of the year outside rather than in.
So, because of the iPad now, e-paper is only for people with "sensitive eyes". E-paper is the entire point of an e-reader. Otherwise, save your money and go get the actual books, save even more and get them used.
I'm not going to pay for books digitally, just to strain my eyes.
Even with an e-paper reader, you can't exactly "thumb through the pages" so fail even then.
The iPad just needs Flash and a SD card slot, I don't think it will take off as an e-reader.
@nntpgrip
Well what's new is that apple paid special attention to the actual quality of the screen using an LED-backlight IPS panel, so now we can hope the industry picks that up and puts nice IPS quality panels in netbooks (lag doesn't matter since you can't game on them) and then we just buy a nice netbook with a good display if we don't mind LCD for reading.
So that's the legacy hopefully.
@nntpgrip
+1
"good news for those with eyes"
*fixed*
Engadget really wants to stay in Apples good graces.
@fatjoe
It's a LED LCD with IPS...
Now go and try to read a book (a BOOK, not comics, please) on the PC you're in right now. Now imagine that but with more contrast and brightness (so your eyes are strained even faster).
I'm guessing the reason Sony and Amazon are releasing these 'selling well' statements is because the press (and not just engadget) has fallen in love with the iPad, and mention it as a game changer for e-books.
If my competitor was getting so much free publicity months before their product was released, I'd be putting out these stories too...
@Alan Strangis I'm not sure if Sony came out saying this in reply to the new product release from Apple. Since this was done "at a press conference in the first half of January 2010 and answered reporters' questions."
With the question being " How is the sales of the e-book reader "Reader"?"
It's just that the press is going a bit overboard and posting all these news about e-book readers.
It was a big trend in CES though as well.
It seems more and more like the iPad is the device that the press and corporations want us to buy, but not the device that WE want to buy.
We r already seeing the effects ipad will have on ereader tablet industry. Has CEOs trembling. So felt compelled to make this false statement. Sony reader dys r numbered. N this coming from Sony fanboi.
@logic thinker you're absolutely right. and also there's something to be said about a gadget (in this case the ipad) that has accessories announced 2 months before the product is actually released...
@logic thinker Trembling from laughter
@logic thinker
"We r already seeing the effects ipad will have on ereader tablet industry. Has CEOs trembling. "
Let's see.
Tech media outlets are going up to every one of these guys they consider to be competitors of the Pad, asking them about there products. How well are they doing, and what their plans are in the future.
They respond that they are doing very well, thank you. blah blah blah...
Apple fanatics: "SEEEEEE! TEEY ARE SOOOOO TREMBLING IN THEIR BOOTS BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!"
@logic thinker
you're an idiot. people who read will still buy an e-reader, and if they opt for the iPad, they'll soon realize how eye straining it is to read on the iPad, and will buy an e-reader anyway, or they'll just stick with physical books.
@dedparrot
eyestrain is for pussies
@logicbombde
Wll you kill yourself if Jobs says so in his next keynote?
@daytripper
huh?
If Jobs says "eyestrain is for pussies" in his next keynote, I'll simply point and laugh and say "I told you so."
Of course "selling well" could be complete BS, but I will say this for Sony - they were the first and ONLY e-Ink devices that I've actually handled in person thanks to their placing demo units in the local Target stores. So perhaps they are really selling well?
@MarkB
I DO actually know someone with a Sony e-reader.
Nice lady in her 50s that needed help finding free books online. Helped her find Project Gutenberg.
@LAY
So do I.... My wife.
And to quote her, "They can have my 505 when they pry it from my cold dead fingers."
The whole point of letting people know that there won't be a colour version available is to respond the backlash the iPad got.
They're making it clear that this is an e-reader and it's what it does, and it does it better than the iPad.
There's no bells and whistles attached to this product, it's an e-reader, it read books, and i'm supposing it does it quite well. This is the message they're trying to convey.
@ Rick James
I understand what you're saying about the glare, but for me it hasn't proven to be much of an issue. Once you get in the habit of sitting in the correct lighting conditions, it's really not much of a problem.
I currently have 3 readers - a PRS-505, a Kindle 2, and a newly purchased PRS-600. The PRS-600 just feels better made and more intuitive than the Kindle, but I still find the Kindle to be a decent bit of kit, albeit a bit creaky. I think the next generation from both Amazon and Sony will iron out many of the kinks which people have discovered with them, and hopefully the strong competition arriving from B&N, and, I hate to say it, Apple with the rather disappointing iPad might encourage Amazon to relax some of their more bewildering DRM choices.
Still, kudos to Sony for making something I'm impressed with, rather than merely satisfied with. Hope they can keep it up!
@Cocytean
I personally decided to hold out for the Kindle 3 or whatever the 3rd gen of e-readers will be, despite how good I think the current gen of e-readers are currently.
But I agree with you that I'm kind glad the iPad came out because it may put pressure on other manufacturers to reduce their insanely high e-reader prices--because I think its crazy that for $30 more I can get a PS3. Also, I do hope Amazon becomes less DRM-y.
@Cocytean
Sony's biggest failing with their readers, in my opinion, is their software--both installed on the computer and the OS in the reader. The readers' OS does it job, to be sure, but there are a lot of little things that annoy me, such as the way it uses the author's display name instead of the author's file-as name to sort books. But, I certainly have no regrets about spending $300 on my PRS-600.
I wish Sony had put wireless capability on the smaller models.
@pika2000
Wouldn't that be like, surfing the Web on the original Gameboy?
@Wesscoast Who's going to surf the web on eInk display anyway? It's about accessing content, getting the books anywhere anytime you want. That is one of the reason the Kindle is more successful that past Sony e-readers, because you can get your content anywhere anytime you want.
I absolutely adore my Sony Reader Touch Edition. I think it leads the pack as far as hardware goes, thanks equally to the fact that it's made of metal instead of plastic, and also because it's a fair bit smaller than the competition because of its smaller bezel.
I also find it indispensible for jotting down handwritten notes and sketches, which is something that most of these devices (including the iPad) can't do.
Of course they are. The touch was near impossible to find for months after being released. There's no reason for a color version for a book reader, unless you consider comics reading. The sony in my opinion is still the best reader on the market. None of the others are designed anywhere near as nice and all the standards it supports is awesome (ya i'm really saying that about sony, go figure).
@jonyah
Ahem. Magazines? Newspapers with.. *ahem... colour photos?
Sorry, dude, but did you just step out of a time machine? We have color TV now too. It's nifty.