Hello,
You might remember me as the guy who hesitated forever to order his mobile reader. Today I received my PRS-600 silver, my FIRST e-book reader. Here is my review of it.
My main concern was the pdf reflow. I read 90% pdf so this was critical for me. On this, I have been VERY positively impressed. My concern was that I would need to keep zooming around and manipulate the magnifier on every page a dozen of times in order to read my pdf. Not at all.
95% of my pdf collection is very-well read. By this, I mean that the text reflows very nicely and can be zoomed in. I was very impressed. My collection of Dummies book is all readable.
I have tried to upload all kind of books and I've found that the PRS-600 does an awesome for all but the oldest scans (1990 and earlier) where it will convert to image and be unreadable. Overall, I have been very impressed. Even finance and mathematical books read fine.
The readability of the PRS-600 is impressive too. It definitely isn't a "computer screen" and in my opinion, can be read as easily as paper. After a couple of hours reading on it, I felt perfectly normal.
But what I liked the most on the PRS-600 is the ability to highlight text, then refer to it quickly on the main menu, in two clicks. When you are trying to summarize - and might forget the exact details of the book after a few months - this is by far the best feature for me.
The dictionnary is nice, but unless you don't speak english well, useless. The ability to take notes is VERY good. The drawing option is in my opinion useless; too slow to take notes, and there are better alternatives if you want to write yourself. The collection group is also great.
The design has much improved, the unit is still robust. The only little concern is about the glare on the screen I had heard of. However, this is nowhere as bad as some people mentioned it. Yes, under direct light (for example), the glare can be fairly annoying. And yes, there are positions where I definitely felt not confortable reading. However, simply moving the device a bit solves the problem. This is nowhere near as bad a problem as I thought.
My thoughts? Overall an excellent buyer, particularly for a first reader. The big con? Only 8 shades of gray. This is in my opinion a device designed for beginners - although some features will please more advanced users - because it doesn't have the clearest possible text. Experts will be better served with more advanced (and expensive) models; however, I do believe 90% of users will find this device particularly fine. At $399CAN ($299 USD) it's well-priced.
In my opinion this is the best device for beginners currently on the market.
