MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Looking for a no-frills, versatile ereader

nonanon · 05-17-2010, 01:59 AM

Our household has a variety of readers so I'll tell you my experience. I had the Sony 500 until I sent it to get the firmware upgrade and they ruined the battery life along with other problems. Happily the service center replaced it with a brand-new Sony 600, a much more expensive model.

I like it quite a bit. It's much faster at loading books and changing font sizes than the 500 and page turns are really fast, too. In direct sunlight I have to turn the reader away from the sun before turning pages or the text is washed out and sometimes illegible. Since I read a lot outdoors that means I need to always remember to do this which is a minor bother. This is a known defect with some e-ink displays and if I'd paid for the 600 I would complain but since it was free I will probably just deal with it. The 6" touchscreen and interface are really good and it takes SD and memory stick media. Neither the 300 or 600 come with an AC adapter but a universal AC/DC is a cheap solution.

My son has a Nook and I've played with that a bit. It's similar to the 600 but has the little LCD screen which he likes. For me it takes up too much space and is something I'd rarely use. I think the footprint of my 600 is superior. His screen does not seem to wash out in direct sunlight which is a plus and the speed is similar. It supports a few formats the Sony doesn't but not RTF. Formats can be easily changed so that's not a big issue.

His wife has a Sony 300. The smaller screen makes it more portable which is why it's called the Pocket Edition and it weighs less, too. I find it a little harder to read on this than the Nook, 500 or 600 but it's otherwise about the same. It's cheaper and just as fast as the others but lacks any memory card slots.

I still read on LCD devices, too and don't mind it at all. The main drawbacks are battery life and some people seem to get eyestrain from reading from that type of screen for long periods. The trade-off is you have a device that may let you watch videos or surf the net. The Nook can do this to some extent and if it's hacked that supposedly works even better. Battery life is much shorter with wifi and/or 3G turned on.

I hope I didn't make this still more complicated but an LCD may make sense if you want to do more than read and don't want to carry two devices. I don't mind reading on my iPod Touch in landscape mode and it's nice to be able to read light-colored text on a dark background in some situations. That's not an option with e-ink devices.

05-17-2010, 01:59 AM	#14
nonanon Enthusiast Posts: 45 Karma: 21900 Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Utah Device: iPad, Nook Simple Touch	Our household has a variety of readers so I'll tell you my experience. I had the Sony 500 until I sent it to get the firmware upgrade and they ruined the battery life along with other problems. Happily the service center replaced it with a brand-new Sony 600, a much more expensive model. I like it quite a bit. It's much faster at loading books and changing font sizes than the 500 and page turns are really fast, too. In direct sunlight I have to turn the reader away from the sun before turning pages or the text is washed out and sometimes illegible. Since I read a lot outdoors that means I need to always remember to do this which is a minor bother. This is a known defect with some e-ink displays and if I'd paid for the 600 I would complain but since it was free I will probably just deal with it. The 6" touchscreen and interface are really good and it takes SD and memory stick media. Neither the 300 or 600 come with an AC adapter but a universal AC/DC is a cheap solution. My son has a Nook and I've played with that a bit. It's similar to the 600 but has the little LCD screen which he likes. For me it takes up too much space and is something I'd rarely use. I think the footprint of my 600 is superior. His screen does not seem to wash out in direct sunlight which is a plus and the speed is similar. It supports a few formats the Sony doesn't but not RTF. Formats can be easily changed so that's not a big issue. His wife has a Sony 300. The smaller screen makes it more portable which is why it's called the Pocket Edition and it weighs less, too. I find it a little harder to read on this than the Nook, 500 or 600 but it's otherwise about the same. It's cheaper and just as fast as the others but lacks any memory card slots. I still read on LCD devices, too and don't mind it at all. The main drawbacks are battery life and some people seem to get eyestrain from reading from that type of screen for long periods. The trade-off is you have a device that may let you watch videos or surf the net. The Nook can do this to some extent and if it's hacked that supposedly works even better. Battery life is much shorter with wifi and/or 3G turned on. I hope I didn't make this still more complicated but an LCD may make sense if you want to do more than read and don't want to carry two devices. I don't mind reading on my iPod Touch in landscape mode and it's nice to be able to read light-colored text on a dark background in some situations. That's not an option with e-ink devices.