Review: Sony PRS-700 Reader

With recent disappointing news that the much awaited Amazon Kindle 2 is being delayed, Sony has released their $400 PRS-700 Reader and initial reviews say that it is difficult to read.

I can already see publishers across the country, sighing with relief that Sony struck out with their latest ebook reader which had potential to be very cool. Sony improved on this reader by including a touchscreen, a sidelight as well as a simpler interface but forgot to making the screen easy to read. The design flaw is the horrendous glare caused by the translucent layer used by the touchscreen and sidelight, rendering the device useless.

Sony also made no improvements on the software side of reader.

I guess they totally dropped the ball on this one. What could’ve been very cool improvements to last year’s reader did nothing but reduce the paper replacement to a paper weight.