The world became a massive fan of Sony’s original e-book reader, the PRS-505. However, the subsequent models were not that good, they dropped the quality metal casing for a cheap feeling plastic and, on the high end model the touchscreen interface was not particularly responsive. The Touch has been unveiled the PRS-650 with the Pocket Edition PRS-350, which is a smaller version. Both of them are very similar to each other; they both have touchscreen interfaces, 2GB of internal memory and built in dictionaries. In the following review, we will see about the Touch Edition PRS-650.
With the latest edition of the Sony PRS-650 eBook Reader, we would say that Sony has managed to get back on the right track. This new reader has the task on its hand, with its rival being the all new, Amazon Kindle that is exclusively for the UK market. To begin with, is does not have any integrated wireless, you will not be able to download or buy books without hooking it up to a PC, and it is obviously quite pricey too. Though it is a huge tough task, Sony has always made it a priority to make to overcome such seemingly insuperable hurdles. It has an absolute cracker of a design, but we cannot judge an e-reader by its cover, so we have tested it to find out if it manages to live up to its sleek exterior. Read on to find out how it manages to do it.

Design:

Classy:

As we had mentioned in the introduction, the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS 650 is an absolutely gorgeous e-reader. The bezel on the front and its spine are brushed aluminium that is cool to touch and the rear panel consists of quite a rubberised plastic veneer that has quite a good grip. The entire device feels as though it has been put together with great care to detail. This design is identical to that of the PRS 600, all the aspects from button layout to the display size remains mostly unchanged. The good news is that, the PRS-600 had its reputation to be one of the most stylish eBooks on the market, so we are not particularly worried by the lack of a revolution. With dimensions of (H x W x D) 118 x 168 x 9.6mm, the Sony Reader Touch Edition (PRS-650) seems to be quite squashed for a 6” eBook reader. Build quality wise, it is absolutely rock solid and when held in hand, the feel you get is better than Amazon Kindle.

The eBook reader has 5 controls along the bottom of the screen. They include page-turn (back and forth), zoom for different sized fonts, home menu, and a context sensitive options button. Naturally, the most of functions are accessed by means of the Reader's touchscreen, that sports an on-screen QWERTY keyboard. The Reader Touch Edition PRS-650 is available in black or red. You can choose from a standard cover, or a deluxe version that includes a built-in reading lamp.

Headphone Socket:

There is a 3.5mm headphone socket, which aids with listening to audio books or MP3s, while a stylus has been placed into the top right side end for you to make notes. We are not sure why, but the 3.5mm headphone jack has been placed underneath the reader, which means, the ear buds could thrust you in the crotch if you rest the device on your lap. It also means the headphone cord runs in front of the screen, and if you move it round the back it will pull on your ears.

User Interface:

The user interface of the Reader has been updated to be more touch-friendly and it is welcome. Gone are the lists of books, and instead you are greeted with a homepage that uses book cover images to give you nice big icons, so it is easier to find your way around and it has a more complete feel to it. It is a more consumer approach, rather than the previous versions which had something of a file/folder feel to them.

Features:

Memory:

Identical to the last generation model, the Touch Edition PRS 650 too boasts 2GB of internal storage (enough to store around 1200 eBooks), along with two memory card slots on the top edge for your expansion needs. Out of the two slots, one of it is for the memory sticks and the other is for SD cards which boosts the potential storage space to an impressive 34GB. This might seem like overkill for a video-free device, but if you plan to use the Reader for music and picture viewing, those two gigabytes are sure to fill up fast.

Display feature:

The PRS 650 is a big improvement over the previous models and this enhancement can be narrowed down into two major factors. To begin with, the resistive touchscreen layer outside layer has been removes and in its place is an infrared optical sensor that has been rooted in the bezel of the display. This feature makes the screen much softer on the eyes and even makes it much less prone to any sort of reflective glare. You can stare at an e-ink screen for much longer than a computer screen without straining your eyes. Most importantly, it is actually far more responsive than before. Just a breezy touch is enough to activate the buttons and menu items. Just a whisper left and right anywhere on the screen, it allows you to turn pages through the texts. The readers are very quick, but there is still a flicker between each page and each menu as the e-ink adjusts. It is worth trying the ebook reader in the shop before buying to see if that is going to annoy you. After all, you will be turning a page every minute, so it could get irritating.

E Ink Pearl Panel:

The next most important thing about the display is that, it has been upgraded. Both of these latest models boast the newest and the best E Ink Pearl Panel, and this feature ultimately places it very much near to the Kindle. To be specific, the Pearl display brings in a claimed fifty percent enhancement in contrast over the previous models and they even have closer refresh times. We would not dare to dispute with either of these factors, but both of them make a huge difference when it comes to reading. The backdrop now looks very much close to genuine paper than it had ever before. Even though there is some slight pixellation that is still visible of the boundaries of the characters, we did not have any real qualms, flicking from each and every page with a finger stroke, which is just like reading a real book, but without that rustling. When this is combined with the Touchscreen technology, the enhanced refresh rates have made some pan around and zoom into the complex PDFs, really practical for the very first time on an ebook reader. When we loaded quite a huge and quite a tricky file to render on any device for that matter, it was impressively easy to manage. Although the reader displays pictures, it only shows in black and white or rather, 16 shades of grey. E-ink is also extremely low-powered ; Sony claims the Touch is capable of two full weeks of reading on a single battery charge.

eBooks:

The Sony Reader PRS-650 6" Touch Screen eBook Reader surely does have a very convincing reading experience, but this giant manufacturer will be very well aware of the fact that that will just not be enough, when there is the giant called Amazon, which is beating the latest edition of Sony readers quite aggressively on the price. And it cannot rest assured especially when the book supplies that it joins hands with are WaterStones, Mills & Boons and WHSmith, which looks extremely weak near Amazon’s four hundred thousand books strong catalogue. This is one of the reasons why Sony has decided to focus its marketing pains on the endorsement of various ways to content that is free. On this note, each of the register eReader PRS 650 comes with about 100 free classics titles. Ebooks can be downloaded from the online Reader Store, or from other sources as long as they are in the standard ePub and PDF formats. You can also read Word documents and other text files.

Database:

The Sony Reader home page has provides you with a fast way to search the entire database of books on Google to find the ones that are downloadable. Note that, Google’s search engine does not allow you to filter it in similar fashion. There is also a list of local establishments that offer free eBook lending, which has about 50 of them at the moment, including the London Libraries Consortium that covers all the London boroughs. If at all you are a lucky member of one of these, all that you require is your card number and library PIN and then, you can just browse through and download the eBook titles in the library for free. However, there are a couple of catches in here. First one is that, the books expire in 2 or 3 weeks, vanishing on their own on the eReader in the process if all of the library’s titles are ‘Out’, and you will have to wait until they are ‘returned’. And the second obvious issue is the limited number of titles in the local libraries. But, this is an avenue that is completely closed to the Kindle owners as Amazon’s reader does not support the Adobe DRM technology that allows books to be borrowed in this manner.

The Extras:

In addition to reading eBooks on the Touch Edition PRS 650, view greyscale images and listen to songs, the device also doubles as a digital notepad for writing and drawing notes. File format support is excellent, including PDFs, BBeB, ubiquitous ePub standard, and the Microsoft Word. The handwriting tool is a pretty fun diversion, but we cannot imagine people returning to it all that often. The e-ink screen simply is not sophisticated enough to be worth the bother: all of the sketches ended up looking like clumsy, childlike scrawls.

Dictionary:

The Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS 650 6-inch screen eBook Reader also has a few other advantages over its rivals. Firstly, it has the edge over superior handling of PDF files. Not only does it handles the complex image based files handled with aplomb, even the text-based books work well. When you zoom in on a PDF page on the Kindle, you will just end up having to pan around to see the entire page. However, with the Sony Reader PRS 650, it allows you to reflow text so elegantly, that it is readable irrespective of the zoom level selected. Another handy extra on the gadget is the ten dictionaries (one American, one English, and ten for translation of Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Dutch) it sports. All you have to do to enable this feature is to just double-tap on a word to launch a definition or translation. However, this does not have a few issues. The stylus allows you highlight the text and get back to them speedily through an alphabetical list, but the handwritten notes feature does not work well at all, the touch sensor does not pick it up in a smooth and consistent way.

Performance:

Occasionally, the graphics seems to leave a disturbing ghost image on the display while you move over a page. The good news in that, it does not afflict text. The interface is not too perfect, as it files bookmarks beneath ‘Notes’ in the menu, which is obtuse and scrolling through the books with a scrollbar can get really awkward. You might prefer search using the onscreen keyboard or using the physical buttons. Apart from these minor quibbles, the PRS 650 is an absolute talented eBook reader.

Warranty:

Sony offers its Reader Touch Edition PRS-650 one year warranty for parts and 90 days for labour.

Verdict:

The Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS-650 is definitely one of the best ebook readers going. It is lightweight and packs a decent-sized screen. It is bursting with extra features, from music to built-in dictionaries. The device’s ability to borrow books for free from local libraries and its handling of PDFs in particular, makes it a serious alternative to the Amazon Kindle. And, without any doubt, there will be many who will prefer its more open approach. However, unless you are desperate for that extra inch of screen real estate, the Sony Reader Pocket Edition PRS-350 does the job equally well. With no Wi-Fi or bundled accessories, it is perhaps a teensy bit overpriced. The mammoth rival that the PRS 650 is facing is that, the Amazon Kindle that is exceptionally good, is priced much lower and we fear most people will not even go as far as considering it as a good deal.

You may also be interested in Amazon Kindle 3G eBook Reader Review.

Sony PRS-650 eBook Reader - Technical Specification Table

Manufacturer	Sony
Model Name	Sony Reader PRS 650 EBook
Product Code	PRS-650
Available Colours	Red, White and Black
Dimensions (H x W x D)	118 x 168 x 9.6mm
Weight	215 grams
Display technology	E Ink® Pearl touchscreen
Screen size	6 inch
Display resolution	800 x 600
Grey scale	16-level grey scale
Built in memory	2GB (Approx. 1200 eBooks)
Processor	Windows: 800 MHz Celeron class processor or better Macintosh: Intel, PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 processor
RAM	128 MB or more (minimum 512 MB for Windows 7, Windows Vista)
USB	Hi-Speed USB
Memory slots	MemoryStick MS DUO slot SD Card Slot
Compatible free eBook and text formats	EPUB eBook, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word, TXT, RTF, BBeB
Compatible DRM eBook and text file formats	EPUB eBooks (Adept) BBeB eBooks (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio files	MP3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
Compatible image files	JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Compatible Operating systems	Microsoft Windows 7 (32/64 bit), Microsoft Windows Vista (32/64 bit), Microsoft Windows XP (32 bit only), Mac OS X version 10.6.2 or later, 10.5.6 or later, 10.4.11 or later
Ports	1 USB Port
Battery type	Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery: DC 3.7 V
Battery life	2 full weeks of reading
Recharging time	Four hours with USB, Two hours with optional AC charger
Package contents	Sony eBook PRS 650, Micro USB cable, Quick start guide,Reader eBook Library Software, User guides, Soft protective sleeves
Warranty	Limited warranty - Parts: 1 year, labour: 90 days