Sony has been in the e-reader market for more than 5 years and after losing a lot of their market, they bounced back in the battle Sony vs Kindle with the new improved Sony ebook reader with Wi-Fi.
Sony Reader vs Kindle
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Kindle vs Sony Review
Design and navigation – The 6-inch touch screen on the Sony PRS 505 ereader responds intuitively to enable the reader to easily navigate through the menus and search for book titles.
The E-ink technology offers the reader a similar experience to reading on paper. The screen is not backlit (as with touch phones and computers) and can be read in glaring light or bright sunlight which is the same technology used by Kindle.
Weighing in at 6 ounces, and with a 6-inch screen, the Sony reader can be held comfortably with one hand and navigated with tapping and holding or swiping your finger to turn pages.
You can pinch your fingers together to zoom in and apart to zoom out which is particularly good for reading PDFs. For those who prefer to navigate using buttons, there is a row of buttons at the bottom of the device which can be used as an alternative to the touch screen.
Reading content
With access to over 2 million titles and the ability to borrow from your public library, you will never be short of a book to read on your Sony ebook reader.
If you enjoy making notes or highlighting passages, you can use your fingers or the supplied stylus. You can also bookmark pages so that you can easily find them again.
A really cool feature on the Sony ereader is the dictionary feature. If you come across a word that you don’t understand, tap and hold your finger on the word and the e-reader will instantly access two ready installed English language dictionaries (British and American).
As well there are 10 foreign language dictionaries that translate words into and from French, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. This is a great asset to a traveler or somebody learning one of those five languages.
Battery life and memory
The Sony ebook reader comes with 2GB of internal memory which will hold 1,200 books at a time. You can extend the memory by purchasing an additional MicroSD card which provides another 32GB of storage. The battery life will let you read for a month or 14,000 page turns. This is plenty for somebody going on a long trip who doesn’t want to continually recharge the device.
Other features
As with the Kindle, the Sony Touch allows you to transfer books and also to charge your device using a USB connection to your computer. You can download your books wirelessly or to your computer and then transfer them to your e-reader. There is also an MP3 player so that you can listen to music while you are reading and full web browsing facilities.
Sony Reader vs Kindle Pros and Cons
This is a neat, lightweight device with several advanced features that is easy to use. The six language dictionaries would be a great bonus to anybody traveling overseas. English and Spanish are two of the world’s most widely spoken languages. Also French and German fall within the top ten most spoken languages by the population.
The ebook reader has an easy-to-read display which makes you feel as if you are reading a real book, a responsive touch screen, and long battery life. It also supports multiple formats including ePub which means that books don’t just have to be sourced from the Sony shop.
One of the main cons is that there is nowhere to store the stylus on the reader which seems to me to be a design oversight. A small stylus will easily be lost. A few buyers have commented that the plastic casing makes it look cheap, although this does contribute to it being such a lightweight at just under 6 ounces.
No 3G connection – with dictionaries covering 6 languages this would be a big plus for a traveler as they would not need to find a Wi-Fi hot spot. There have been some complaints that there is no Chinese dictionary as this is the most widely spoken language in the world.
Unlike many of the other readers, the Sony ebook reader does not have apps that let you read your books on other devices such as your computer or smartphone.
