My view of sound is such that the PRS600 offers convenience. It has adequate sound quality if one just wants some background music while reading. If your preference is high end audio quality with the ability to conveniently select songs or albums, the PRS600 will disappoint.
Personally I love to listen to classical music while reading. For example, when I am on an airplane, the PRS600 works fine. I put a couple of my favorite albums on an SD card and all is well. When I'm reading at home, I generally opt for a higher quality listening experience, which I consider a reference standard for portable MP3 players.
For those who are interested, there are four key components that I use to obtain a high quality, portable, listening experience:
- iPod Classic (30GB)
- high quality cable that connects the iPod to an output amp
- Ray Samuels portable amplifier
- Shure E500 sound isolating earphones; or Eymotic ER4P sound isolating earphones
This setup bypasses the iPod amplifier by feeding an unamplified signal to an external amplifier via a high quality, low impedance, cable. The D/A converter on the iPod is very good, but the iPod's output amp makes compromises due to space considerations. The sound isolating earphones are important in the sense that they have the capability to reproduce a high quality signal. It would be pointless to use earbuds with this set up.
If one compares the two options there is a considerable difference from an audio quality point of view. To be honest, however, the high quality option has a tendency to distract me at times from the reading experience, which brings me back to my original premise. If you want adequate quality background music the PRS600 does a good job.