Sony eReader - PRS-700 release announced

One last post before I'm off.

The Sony eBook Readers were one of the few bits of technology that I chose to become an early adopter with. I bought the PRS-500 which was the first of their reader line. I absolutely love the thing and will never go back to a paperback unless I have no choice in the matter.


There were some fundamental issues with the design of the PRS-500 unit that were subsequently addressed in the more recent PRS-505 however it was not enough of an improvement for me to be interested in buying it to replace the 500. It was just a reshuffling of buttons and a slightly lighter coloured/higher contrast Screen. No touch screen, no backlight and the worst failing, no PDF reflow (where a PDF document 'reflows' it's content to work with a smaller format screem). The lack of reflow prevented the unit from having any use as a reference book reader.

Now Sony have just announced what could well be a viable replacement for the 500. The PRS-700.

The PRS-700 has touch screen, annotating, search function and a reading light. Best of all it has PDF reflow so you can load PDFs into the reader and use it as a searchable reference tool. This is going to come into serious consideration for purchase I think. Current expected price is $400 which seems fairly reasonable.

Other specs:
- 6 inch display
- internal storage for around 350 books
- SD memory card storage and Memory Stick Duo
- 5 preset text sizes
- Supported formats: PDF, .DOC, BBeB, RTF, TXT and a few others.
- Plays MP3s - great for audio books
- Comes with a stylus
- Seemingly no cup holders...

Sony Press Release