The Sony PRS700: the Newest Member of the Sony Reader Family

[phoenixfire1965]

Wow, could this be more underwhelming? I am sorely disappointed with Sony and this is a pathetic effort in my opinion. I recently purchased a Kindle recently after being told by a Sony rep with customer relations that maybe I should "spend my money somewhere else". No problem. Will do. So far I love the Kindle.

I was hoping that this would be huge but not so. Very disappointing effort, and overpriced.

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by phoenixfire1965

Wow, could this be more underwhelming? I am sorely disappointed with Sony and this is a pathetic effort in my opinion. I recently purchased a Kindle recently after being told by a Sony rep with customer relations that maybe I should "spend my money somewhere else". No problem. Will do. So far I love the Kindle.

I was hoping that this would be huge but not so. Very disappointing effort, and overpriced.

I sense a great deal of disappointment from you, that's clear, but you've not said at all what you're disappointed about. What were you looking for?

[junkyardwillie]

Come on $100 bucks extra for a light?? Thats BS. I'm really disappointed in this also. You can buy a book light for $15 and attach it to the cover and it works great.

I'm really worried about this move of little improvements and big price hikes like the Iliad. eReaders are already overpriced for the average consumer and it seems like they are trying to find the pricing point where the first adopters won't want to buy it either. I'm not a big fan of needing to slide your finger across the page to turn the page, its just a silly gimick leave the button for page turn. We'll see how their search works.

I truly feel that they need to stop trying to come up with the next small add-on and figure out how to speed up those page turns. There are some real issues that people have with the readers and they need to concentrate on those and not on BS add-ons. I know Sony is a poorly run company but trying to make a big deal out of this announcement is just ridiculous, someone over there should be fired

[khourianya]

I think it is great that Sony is making an effort to add more to their Reader line-up. This particular device holds no interest for me, but I am sure it will be great for others (the thought of touching my reader screen all the time gives me the heebie-jeebies – it’s the main reason my iPod Touch rarely gets used). I love my 505 and think it is still prettier than the new offering (and I am so happy they didn’t make it obsolete).

I am looking forward to seeing how they’ve improved the Reader software. It’s too bad they didn’t just take it web-based but something is better than nothing!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by junkyardwillie

Come on $100 bucks extra for a light?? Thats BS. I'm really disappointed in this also. You can buy a book light for $15 and attach it to the cover and it works great.

I'm really worried about this move of little improvements and big price hikes like the Iliad. eReaders are already overpriced for the average consumer and it seems like they are trying to find the pricing point where the first adopters won't want to buy it either. I'm not a big fan of needing to slide your finger across the page to turn the page, its just a silly gimick leave the button for page turn. We'll see how their search works.

I truly feel that they need to stop trying to come up with the next small add-on and figure out how to speed up those page turns. There are some real issues that people have with the readers and they need to concentrate on those and not on BS add-ons. I know Sony is a poorly run company but trying to make a big deal out of this announcement is just ridiculous, someone over there should be fired

The page turn speeds are due to the speed of the vizplex eink screen. Sony cannot do anything about that. That's something you have to complaint o PVI about.

As for $100 for a light... not so... there's the light and the touch screen. The touch screen allows more functionality. So it's actually both that make up the $100 difference.

How is Sony a poorly run company? They seem to be doing a pretty good job to me. It's things like this that help spread the word about readers. And the 30 days reading in the window will help as well.

Why is it that you are so negative?

[astrodad]

It looks to be the same thickness, or very nearly the same, as the 505. Look at the high resolution shots of the top and you'll see how thick it is compared to the memory expansion slots.

I personally like it alot. I would have like see wireless connectivity to rival Amazon's store, and perhaps some sort of new arrangement with a retail bookstore. I would also have liked to see full operating system neutrality. It seems as though it's still PC imprisoned.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by phoenixfire1965

Wow, could this be more underwhelming? I am sorely disappointed with Sony and this is a pathetic effort in my opinion. I recently purchased a Kindle recently after being told by a Sony rep with customer relations that maybe I should "spend my money somewhere else". No problem. Will do. So far I love the Kindle.

I was hoping that this would be huge but not so. Very disappointing effort, and overpriced.

Welcome to MobileRead.

1.) You are underwhelmed.
Perhaps you can point out the ways in which you were underwhelmed by news of Sony's new Reader? Details into what you would have liked to see would have been helpful in your post.

2.) Why are you disappointed?
Can you elaborate on your disappointment? Perhaps this question is related to your being underwhelmed?

3.) Why is the effort pathetic?
What kind of an effort were you expecting from Sony? Can you give the reader of your post details on what you were expecting?

4) "So far I love the Kindle."
I'm extremely pleased that you like your purchase. I think it's important for customers to like the products they purchase. There's a lot of money involved in the purchase of a Reader, be it Sony, Gen3, Iliad, Kindle, eBookwise, et al. I've read that many people are quite satisfied with the purchase of a Kindle, and to know that you're a satisfied user is indeed good news.

I'm a satisfied owner of the Sony PRS-505.

Perhaps these two Readers can co-exist, that of the Sony and that of the Kindle?

Sincerely,
Don

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by junkyardwillie

I truly feel that they need to stop trying to come up with the next small add-on and figure out how to speed up those page turns.

Perhaps it got lost in all the verbiage of the original post:

Originally Posted by NatCh

Some other nice incidentals include a reportedly much snappier page change speed ....

CNet has commented that this is so as well, so we have some preliminary confirmation.

Hopefully our representative will be able to clarify it more.

As JSWolf said, the page turn speed is mostly a function of the e-ink itself, which Sony isn't in a position to "work on" since that tech is owned by eInk Inc. Also the controller seems to make a difference, and Sony has consistently gone with the best controller available to them for each model.

To me that 2 and 2 add up to a fairly persuasive 4 that Sony is actively pursuing faster page turns here. Are there things that they could do but aren't? There may well be, I have no visibility of that. But I don't really think that it's fair to suggest that they don't care about that point.

[JeffElkins]

I'm a bit disappointed by the announcement. Not so much with the 700 -- it seems a capable enough device (although leaving out WIFI was a strategic blunder) -- but in a "is that all there is?" sense.

I would have liked to see Sony introduce a cheaper device (perhaps a plastic-bodied 5" screen) to entice more folks to e-reading.

I'd also like to see a roadmap of where they are going with the 505's firmware. Will there be a bug update? Addition of SDIO WIFI? Nokia's done this pretty well with OS updates for their tablets. Even with the elderly 770 they produced a no-support "hacker's edition" OS update.

Why not open the store to all platforms and make it International.

Sony software for the Mac/Linux platforms. There's really no excuse not to.

[rsdavis9]

I really want search and dictionary.

Is there any possibility they may add that to the prs-505?
They could do it with the 10 side keys with a phone line key press arrangement.(as previously suggested).

Is it possible igor's hacks can provide that functionallity?

bob

p.s. I love my 505.

[junkyardwillie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How is Sony a poorly run company? They seem to be doing a pretty good job to me. It's things like this that help spread the word about readers. And the 30 days reading in the window will help as well.

Why is it that you are so negative?

I'm only mad at Sony because I think they have no idea of what they are doing. Sony has been a poorly run company for years, they just began trying to clean up their act thats why they constantly fall behind their compeition. In an article about their CEO Howard Stringer he even notes:

"But how could Stringer get his devices talking to each other in a company whose executives were barely talking to each other? When he took over, Sony was so dysfunctional–and divisions guarded their territory so fiercely–that managers working for one division wouldn’t return phone calls from their counterparts in another division. "

I'm glad that Sony is staying in the eReader business but this is a lackluster release and they should be pushing the technology not waiting to see what others are doing and staying one step behind.

I have the PRS500 and I love it but I'd like to see them do some more with it, get the software right at the very least. They should be working on lowering the price (eink is now about 3 years deep, if they can't reduce prices now then they never will and they will never get more customers) and sizes (get a couple of different size eink devices in and figure out a way to cut the costs even if it means losing money on it for a while, look what Microsoft did with the Xbox to overtake Playstation). I had to stop even trying to use the Connect store because it kept getting trapped in an endless search whenever I was looking for books. Hopefully they get the program right with this change but they need to get it web-based and more user-friendly as amazon is. This would have been a great release if it was priced around $150 to $200 to pull in new customers. Its not worth an upgrade and if someone wasn't going to buy a 505 they certainly won't buy this at a higher price.

At their current rate I fear that Sony will drop out of the eReader business. Raising prices will not bring in new customers, making a cheaper model that appeals to more people will. They are just further isolating their consumer base and its just being short sighted. Look at iPods, everyone has one now even though there are tons of other mp3 players. Why? because it did one thing very well and it was priced where people could easily afford it. Sony doesnt need an even more exclusive device, they need one that the average person would be willing to buy and the volume would offset the price, its called taking a risk and they haven't done that in years thats why they fell behind in TVs, video games and personal audio. They never learn.

[NatCh]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't iPods originally sell for ~$400? The non-nano/shuffle types are still mostly above $200 on Amazon.

I'm not as familiar with iPod pricing as I might be if I actually had one, but I went with a Sansa player, mostly for the (massively) better battery life it gets.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't iPods originally sell for ~$400? The non-nano/shuffle types are still mostly above $200 on Amazon.

I'm not as familiar with iPod pricing as I might be if I actually had one, but I went with a Sansa player, mostly for the (massively) better battery life it gets.

I think the smallest hard drive version of the iPod has always been around $250. Each release they bump up the capacity and features of that base (now classic) model. For example, I have a gen 4 which has a 20gb drive and monochrome screen that cost me $250. The new gen 6 iPod classic now has a 120GB drive, a color screen that plays movies and games.

BOb

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I think the smallest hard drive version of the iPod has always been around $250. Each release they bump up the capacity and features of that base (now classic) model. For example, I have a gen 4 which has a 20gb drive and monochrome screen that cost me $250. The new gen 6 iPod classic now has a 120GB drive, a color screen that plays movies and games.

Okay, my numbers are a bit off. Still that sounds a fair amount like what Sony's doing with their prices -- the newest model is the price of the old one when it was new.

I also feel it should be noted that Sony has no control over the cost of the most expensive component in these devices: the display. That's PVI's call.

Loss-leading is a strategy that works well in some markets and not in others. Books are rather a smaller industry than video games, and Sony isn't really even trying locking us into their bookstore -- the multiple formats and the new epub support are evidence of that. Even Amazon's Kindle, the single most locked down reading device available, isn't loss-leading, and Amazon knows quite a bit about the subject ... how many years did they operate before they first showed a profit?

I guess what I'm saying is: pineapples to kumquats.

[Katelyn]

Touch screen? Internal reading light? Sign me up!

I'll be replacing my 1 month old 505 (with wedgelight cover) shortly after some reviews are posted from new owners (to ensure it's not flaky). Of course, one of these days I need to seriously think about selling my 2 GEB 1150s or my REB 1200 or this 505... I just love ebook readers!