Sony Reader Touch Edition
Some of us began to think Sony had forgotten the Australian market when it came to its e-reader product. However, the Japanese giant has proven us wrong by releasing its two e-readers – the Touch and Pocket editions – in Australia, starting from early September.
Unfortunately, while Sony is happy to tell everyone that it came out with its first e-reader device back in 2004, it’s taken six years to get them Down Under, in which time, plenty of competitors have taken over the space.
The larger six-inch Touch Edition (pictured left, also known as PRS650BC) features a 16-greyscale e-ink display with 2GB of internal memory, expandable to at least 32GB via SD/SDHC flash cards. It also supports MemeoryStick Duo cards, according to Sony’s specs. Sony rates the battery for 10,000 page turns.
It’s also audio literate – meaning it can playback audio files. Supported formats are MP3 and AAC.
Its book format support includes EPUB, PDF, DOC, TXT, RTF and BBeB.
The smaller (PRS350BC) Pocket Edition features a five-inch e-ink displaywith 16-level greyscale and the same 10,000-page-turn battery life.
Sony Reader Pocket Edition
The main difference here is that while you get 2GB of on-board storage, that’s all you get – there are no expansion card slots on offer here. You also (obviously) get no audio playback as a result.
Book format support is the same as the Touch Edition.
Neither version features built-in 3G however, Sony says the readers have been “set up to provide simple navigation to online bookstores” for Angus & Robertson, Borders and others in the REDgroup Retail.
Probably the biggest problem for Sony will be the price – the Touch Edition will go for $299 and the Pocket Edition for $229.
On that basis, they could well struggle up against the established players such as Border’s Kobo reader, with its SD expansion slot and $AUD199 price tag.
Amazon.com may still require Australian consumers to buy direct but with the new Kindle 3G selling for just $US189 (around $AUD250 with shipping) with free 3G, text-to-speech, MP3 playback and other features, Sony will have to work hard to nudge its way into the market.