First off, I'm not sure if this is just my eyes getting older and more contrary or related to the design of the 350/650. I wear the progressive lens bifocals also referred to by no-line bifocals. For those not familiar with them, they have a small circle centered on the lenses where your eyes align that is for far sight. At the outer edge of that circle the lenses progressively change focus toward near objects--hence the name progressive lenses. The farther out from the center of the lenses the closer in the focus. I guess it is similar to macro up close.

At any rate, I read a lot on my 350 and Kindles and iPod touch 4G. I haven't noticed any additional eye strain with any of my eInk readers, and I've had a lot of them. (K2, K3, KDXG, 505, 300, 350, 600, 900.) I can read for hours on my Kindles without much problem. But I've noticed that after a short duration of time reading on my 350 I have a difficult time keeping my eyes focused on the eInk text. I have the silver 350, but I also had the silver 300 and never had this problem with it, so I doubt the silver color is an issue.

I am wondering though if the recessed screen of the 350 is a problem. The screen on the 350 is recessed appx. 0.1" below the bezel. This is considerably more than previous eInk models by Sony and considerably more than the Kindles. I can't help but wonder if my eyes are doing what autofocus cameras do when they are unsure of which object to focus on, that is, if I glance at the bezel perhaps my focus changes just enough to blur the text. I find that reading on the 350 I seem to struggle to keep the text in focus, and so I get eye strain fairly quickly.

Is anyone else experiencing this unusual eye strain behavior?