Sony Reader 300 - HANDS-ON REVIEW

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by akira28

I find this subject very interesting and wonder what a non non-aliased eInk screen might look like. But the information at the site you refer to is questionable. In it he states the following about contrast ratio:

On a computer screen, this ratio might be 1000:1 or more. On the Kindle, it is 7:1 with the E-Ink display. This is a huge fundamental difference in potential contrast!

(For reference, newsprint has a contrast ratio of about 10:1 and a reflective LCD display is only about 5:1.)

He is apparently wrong in his assessment of reflective LCD, or at least wrong in lumping them all together. The Jetbook's LCD has a rated contrast ratio of 12:1, which, if the rest of his article can be believed, is better than newsprint but way better than eInk, relatively speaking. (reference: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Reflective_LCD)

Certainly, it was a bit unfair to toss the relatively new LCD that is being used in devices like the JetBook. The JetBook and M218 are a bit oddball compared to most general-purpose reflective LCDs. Then again, 7:1 isn't an absolute figure for e-ink either, nor is 10:1 for newsprint. However, I do agree it (perhaps inadvertently) paints reflective LCD tech to be inherently inferior, which most of us acknowledge isn't the case with newer tech like the JetBook.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

[BTW, the 300 comes pre-loaded with about 10 book excerpts--interestingly, only about 1/3 of them are in English. I deleted them all anyway. The menu/display language options are English, French, German and Dutch. Interesting that there's no Spanish option here....]

Those correspond to the countries in which Sony have launched the Reader. It's not yet been released in Spain.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Those correspond to the countries in which Sony have launched the Reader. It's not yet been released in Spain.

I guess I'm surprised they have decided not to have an initial release in Spanish-speaking countries.

Originally Posted by Darqref

Looking at these pictures, it appears that the central 4-way button is larger on the 300. Do you find this any easier to manipulate? do the parts of the button actually have a wider "effective area" or are the places you need to press just a bit farther from each other?

My Gen3 has a 4-way that must be pressed inside of the hole through the case, and I end up hitting the central button fairly often. (and I broke the screen once, so I read with it in the case.) When I tried a 505 in the store at Fry's, it seems *better*, but still not great. If the 300 is actually larger, then it might be even better than the 505 (and probably loads better than the gen3)

The larger button on the 300 is easier to hit--you can press towards the rim or towards the center. I did notice that sometimes, when using just my left hand and reaching over with my thumb, that I occasionally hit the center button or both center and left by mistake. Shifting my thumb over (or up from the bottom rather than from the left side) takes care of this when my hand position 'wanders.'

WRT the displays, the e-ink does have sub-capsule differentiation capability. I looked at the web pages linked by LDBoblo, and I looked again at my e-ink devices under higher mag. First, let me say that the 300 display looks nothing like the images on the Kindle "optimizer" page. This is with normal font size, 21 lines on the screen with header and footer. The only place I see a hint of gray edge is on something like a period or dot of an "i." The gray edges are slightly more noticeable on the 505 display, but still nowhere near as blurred as on the Kindle page. (I interpreted this as the sub-capsule addressing rather than anti-aliasing, because I don't see a multitude of grays on text edges of the 300 display.)

Close-up (much closer than normal reading distance!), both text outlines look at least as sharp as that of ink on regular paperback paper (better than my older paperbacks), even though the p-ink appears slightly blacker than e-ink. I would also point out, at higher mag, that the 300 display is noticeably sharper than the 505 display (although the difference isn't really noticeable to me from normal reading distance, and barely discernible from a couple of inches away). I'm not sure if this is because the newer e-ink displays are improved, the smaller e-pixel size/higher density of the 5" display, or the fact that my 300 display has been used much less than the 505 display (but is steadily catching up now ). In any case, neither Reader display looks anything close to "old soggy newsprint" (I still interpret that as an inaccurate, trollish/snarky comment, btw) and in fact they appear as sharp as ink-on-paper in my older (slightly yellowed) paperbacks, which have a similar contrast. I'm sure glossy white paper has sharper letter edges and higher contrast, but it also has more glare than the e-ink displays, in my experience.

As mentioned in my original post, the contrast is slightly better tin the 300 than the 505 (perhaps an improved display, perhaps just a newer display with whiter background). And under higher mag, the same-sized text does have slightly sharper edges on the 300 than on the 505. Neither looks any worse than an old paperback under normal reading conditions. And neither looks nearly as fuzzy as the images on the Kindle Optimizer webpage (which seems to be based on the early older e-ink displays).

Of course, some people can continue to gripe about the microscopic 'shortcomings' of their e-ink devices. (Snarking and nitpicking is pretty cool on the internet, y'know?) I will just continue to comfortably read books on my Readers, and am still happy to answer specific questions about the 300.

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

DrMoze have you put any ePub books on it yet? If so does it support full justification.

The 300 does have full justification on some of my lrf files. (And justification remains at the different font sizes.) Maybe the e-pub file I tried wasn't justified? (I dl'd the most recent version of "3 Men" posted by ZeldaPW.) I'll be happy to try another ePub file if you can suggest one.

[Who are you?]

Attached are some unaltered screenshots from a Sony 505, as they show, the device does have anti-aliasing.

You can also find some more info here.

[jaytrade]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

How comfortable is the next page/prev page dial-looking thing? Being in the middle of the device looks like it might be uncomfortable. I have small-ish hands. The 300 might be nice for using other formats, though. The price seems good.

because of the size, its actually pretty good and i also have small hands (my wife says my hands look the same as they did in my bar-mitzva photos).

I just go the 300 last night and i LOVE it. I went with the 300 as i feel there will be a plethora of e-reader devices in the very near future and i would rather have a starter book right now and then upgrade in a year or two when readers become as big as the ipod did after the 3rd generation or so. Also the price should be much lower for higher end devices when this happens.

[PaulGuy]

Thanks for the review of the 300 Doc. The wife and I ordered a pair of 300s and 600s. The idea being we'd each keep one and return the other. They arrived today and as much as we both wanted to like the slick interfaced and feature packed 600 we both decided to keep the 300s. The 300 display is just nice and crisp. The size, which I originally thought might be too small actually works pretty well. We both have Kindles so these will augment, not replace our current e-readers, giving us access to the DRM'd ePub format currently denied to us with our K2. The 600 is a nice device, real nice. The interface is really slick, the size to me perfect. From a build perspective it's nicer than my Kindle 2. But the display while better than the 700 is still soft compared to other readers. This would have been acceptable if it was my only objection, but the glare/reflectivity is still too high for me. There's no doubt in my mind that this is a big step in the the right direction, it's a fantastic design. For me it just doesn't hit the target just yet. But i must say I like where we're going.

[hw360]

The PRS-300 can read PDF "with reflow capability", how well does it work?

[DrMoze]

Originally Posted by hw360

The PRS-300 can read PDF "with reflow capability", how well does it work?

From what I've used so far, it works great. For example, I have a couple of library pdf's (ADE)that show up in 'small' (S) mode as full-page images with tiny text and page numbers, fairly large margins, etc. Going up to M mode for text size fills the screen with text at a nicely legible size. The right margin is ragged, but it is great for reading. Going to L mode gives pretty large text, bigger than I need. The reflow works fine, although it doesn't eliminate the extra page breaks in these files (so there is sometimes a short page of text that may end mid-sentence). Overall, readability is great for these pdf's.

Originally Posted by PaulGuy

Thanks for the review of the 300 Doc. The wife and I ordered a pair of 300s and 600s. The idea being we'd each keep one and return the other. They arrived today and as much as we both wanted to like the slick interfaced and feature packed 600 we both decided to keep the 300s. The 300 display is just nice and crisp.

I'm not surprised. I really liked the look and feel of the 300. When I played around with the 600 a bit, I didn't like the interface as much. Admittedly, I am used to the simple 500/505 Reader interface. I just want to turn pages, and set and access bookmarks! Too many options and icon bars on the 600 for me, for stuff I won't use. And as you noted, the 600 display just isn't close to the 300's.

Can you do me a favor? If you have a super-duper microscope, can you verify that the edges on the 300's text is indeed sharp, much more than those "Kindle Optimizer" images linked to earlier in this thread? I and other mobilereaders will thank you.

[hw360]

Thanks for the reply, DrMoze.

When PRS-300 reflows pdf, is the format (like font, size, indent etc.) retained?
I don't expect it can display tables well, but it will be great if it could.

[fadingdreams]

Hi, thanks for the detailed review. Just wondering, it was mentioned in one of the posts that the PRS-300 is not any faster than the PRS-505...does that mean that it is slower than its new counterpart the PRS-600, which is suppose to turn pages pretty fast? Thanks!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

The 300 does have full justification on some of my lrf files. (And justification remains at the different font sizes.) Maybe the e-pub file I tried wasn't justified? (I dl'd the most recent version of "3 Men" posted by ZeldaPW.) I'll be happy to try another ePub file if you can suggest one.

Could you try one of the ePub files that I've recently uploaded here? Eg, any one of the H. Rider Haggard Anthologies. They should be displayed fully justified.

[PaulGuy]

Originally Posted by DrMoze

Can you do me a favor? If you have a super-duper microscope, can you verify that the edges on the 300's text is indeed sharp, much more than those "Kindle Optimizer" images linked to earlier in this thread? I and other mobilereaders will thank you.

I'd love to help but my dissecting scope is out for repairs.

[horseyride]

I didn't locate a "delete this book" option when playing in the store. Does it have on like the update firmware on the 505 added? Thanks

[gyuhang419]

Thank you for your good evaluation of the 300. That help me for considering purchasing the ebook reader. Especially the last +/- is very helpful. I'm still waiting for more competitive situation on Ebook reader market. still using PDA for ebook.... Thanks