Well begrudgingly last night I bough the light wedge at the Sony Style store. I just felt paying $75 for a light was too much. Considering I could buy another eBook, for my children at $100).
Well my original book cover broke and after many failed attempts to repair I realized I must purchase a book cover. But the new ones are $40!! At this price making the jump to get the customized light was a better value.
So when I show my wife the new cover she says great, now I have to return your Christmas present!!! Doh!!
The 700 Review
Anyhow since I was at the SonyStyle store I decided to look at the 700 see it first hand.
The case
-The case is aluminum. But the chrome edges are made out of plastic.
Screen- The screen seemed to be about the same size as the 505.
- The font and contrast seem equivalent to the 505.
- The screen is touch screen and works without the stylus.
Perfomance- This is hard to gauge since it is so subjective. But the 700 seemed more responsive to the 505, though not by much. Books loaded faster and the page turned faster.
Zoom
The zoom feature allows the user to zoom in/out of a book page while keeping the format. For regular books this is not a big deal. But for books with pictures or just viewing pictures this feature woks nicely
- There are five font size settings. What is nice is that a user can go straight to their preferred font size and not have to toggle through each setting.
PDF Support
Well having my 505 on hand, I asked the clerk if he minded me popping out SD card and testing the PDF. He said "go for it". I had my card out before he finished his sentence.
The one area that I was disappointed is that SONY did not implement a margin remove feature as one of the font sizes. In my experience with PDFs this is the only change required to make most PDF readable on the SONY 505.
(Add this feature and I think the PDF with the ZOOM) are completely feasible on the SONY reader
- First thing I noticed is that my 2GB card takes about 1min to scan for new books. The 700 took about 20sec.
- The PDF support is identical to that of the 505. With the exception that there was 5 font sizes instead of 3.
- The ZOOM works great here. I was able to zoom into a picture and table in the PDF and the text was clearly visible.
- Unfortunately the ZOOM only works one page at a time and the ZOOM setting is lost when the page is turned.
Built in Light
The built in light was pretty neat it had two levels and mid and a bright. The light is proved by several LED. The result was an uneven light, but still better than no light
The mid light would be great to help reduce glare
One final word.
[Caution: I believe this was speculation so please don't get too excited]
When I asked for when the device went on sale and how much did it cost. He provided the info and mentioned a potential trade in program and cited how there was one for the 500 to 505. I guess the only reason why I mentioned this is if there is enough folks that would like to upgrade their 505 model for a 700. We might want to voice our opinion that we would like so see such an incentive.
Well that's all I have
=X=