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155 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Touch screen: cool page turner, slightly foggy effect, November 13, 2008
I had a Sony reader PRS-505 for a year then bought the new PRS-700 model.
The new model comes with a touch screen put over the letter screen, allowing to turn pages back and forth with swiping motion like iphone. As a result there are fewer buttons for control; a stylus is provided to highlight or search words and make notes.
A little drawback: The added layer of the touch screen causes the underlying letters to appear slightly foggy. However, unless you have a previous model next to the new one to compare, you wouldn't notice it. The appearance of the letters is still excellent. The new PRS 700 offers LED lights around the screen to allow reading in a dark environment. It is slightly thicker and comes in one color. (black). It can now take up to 8G SD card instead of 2G. The grey scale is 8; the resolution is 170 psi---no change from previous model. I upgraded to the new model after thinking about the slightly diminished appearance of the ink letters; I am very happy with the purchase.
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63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sony Prs-700 (Portable Reading System), March 21, 2009
I have never left a review on Amazon.com before, although I have bought many products here over the years.
I decided to leave a review for the Sony Portable Reader 700, since there seems to be some misconception regarding this product, and there aren't ENOUGH (real) reviews here, as opposed to the Kindle (Amazon's own proprietary reader, which is heavily advertised here). I think the reason for this is because amazon reading device, is sold EXCLUSIVELY on Amazon.com to Americans. So it's only natural that it has many hundreds of reviews on this site.
The Sony Readers are sold in thousands of locations, airports, stores, online, bookstores etc. and in several countries around the world. Since very few Sony Reader owners bought their device on Amazon, it's only natural that the reviews here are much fewer. (Then unfortunately there are the Trolls, who leave fake bad 'reviews' for the Sony Reader, trying to damage the ratings for some reason known only to themselves).
This is Sony's 4th e-ink Reader. First the Librie in 2004 which was the very first e-ink reader in the world, then theSony PRS-500 Portable Reader System, in 2006. The PRS-505 which came in three colors in 2007 ; Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader,Sony PRS-505/RC Digital eBook Reader - Red, Sony PRS-505 Portable Digital e-Reader System (Silver) and now the latest Sony PRS-700 Reader Digital Book Portable eBook reader with 6" touchscreen display. The reason I mention the 700's predecessors is to point out that Sony isn't new at the e-ink (e-paper) business. In fact, they were the first!
I had a hard time deciding between the PRS-505 Red and the PRS-700. The PRS-505 has a slightly crisper screen and I LOVED the stylish red color of the device, especially paired with a red leather cover. But for me, the PRS-700 has better features, and more fancy bells and whistles (and comes with a free cover).
I decided on the 700, as it had what I wanted most, and it was the latest :).
The device is very grown-up and stylish looking, great to hold, (not too heavy) and looks EXPENSIVE and nice! Non gimmicky and no cheap plastic here, but then again, that is what we have come to expect from a Sony product.
The touch screen is interactive and can be used as a virtual keyboard to make notes. Words can be highlighted and saved, pages can be bookmarked, small natural gestures to turn pages, (there are also small well placed buttons for page turns and zoom etc.) using either the stylus or your fingers. The last page on the books you are reading is remembered, so it takes seconds to continue reading a book where you left off last time.
Page turns are super fast and there is an ability to zoom into PDF documents and move them around on the page. Hundreds of books, documents, photos, images and mp3's can be stored on the internal device and there are two options for expanding. A SD Memory Card slot and Memory Stick Duo slot, thereby increasing the amount space of books to virtually UNLIMITED!
The Sony PRS-700 supports many document types, PDF, ePub, TXT, RFT, to name just a few. So books can be bought from many sources NOT only the Sony Connect store. Your own documents and ebooks that you already own, can be easily and quickly transferred to your device. A free open source library software called Calibre, (that works very much like iTunes) works fantastically with your Sony and even converts file types and adds metadata and book covers for you.
Sony has recently partnered with Google books bringing their book count up to 600'000 books! The 500'00 Google books are free and mostly in the ePub format. Fantastic news!
Some people have complained about foggy screen, but I don't feel that to be the case. Yes, yes.... I hear that the 505's screen is crisper, but since I don't have one to compare with I don't feel the loss and I'm quite happy - MORE than happy with my personal choice. I have sometimes forgotten that I am using a Reader and slathered my hands with lotion before going to bed (to read), but found NO smudges on the screen the next day. The Sony PRS-700 definitely has a fantastic NON SMUDGE screen.
Also complaints about glare.... WHAT glare? Honestly! The only (small) glare that I encountered was a small spot off the metal edge of the device, and then again only if an artificial light was shining directly on the device.. A tiny adjustment to to the angle - GONE! Oh, and fantastic to read outside!!
All in all, I highly recommend this product for quality, ease of use, support of many formats, thousands of books, stylish design, reasonable price, ability to read in the dark (built in LEDs), and 'coolness' factor!
On a final note I would like to add that there are many ebook and e-ink Readers and devices out on the market now. For eg. The Illiad, Kindle, Bebook, Bookeen Cybook, Hanlin etc etc. There is no wrong or right choice. Do your homework and find the ebook device that best suits YOUR needs. And all those fanatics that support ONLY your own device and try to damage the rating of others.... WHY! That is just plain silly. Who hates their neighbor because they drive a different model car, or hates their friends of family because their mobile phone is a different make or model? I think we should be open minded in order to increase the availability of e-BOOKS, not necessarily of a specific device. IMHO
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183 of 196 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poor screen hurts product, November 16, 2008
The most striking change in the new 700 when compared to the 505 is the new touch screen. Unfortunately, this is the exact thing that has actually caused the 700 to be a less desirable product than the 505. The main problem is readibility. With the 505, the E-ink screen is really like paper. You can read it in low light, angles, etc., and it is very clear. That is not the case with the 700. Due to the touch screen addition, the screen now looks much more like the grayscale screen on something like a graphing calculator. There is a significant decrease in contrast (the "white" now looks "gray"). I found it hard to read in some normal lighting conditions and it also had more glare than the 505. For example, when sitting in a normally lit room in the evening, with a light causing a mild shadow on the reader, I could not see then text (but could easily read a book in the same light. And the tragedy about this is the touch screen to me is a big "who cares". The 505 was easy enough to navigate. The only real new features are the notes and search, and I can't say that I have ever wanted to write notes in my books or search for words. Maybe you will, but I don't.
The other downgrade is navigation. By losing some buttons in favor of the touchscreen, more items now must by chosen on screen. An exaple - changing fonts with the 505 is one button press and it cycles to the next font size. With the 700, you have to press the font size key, then touch the screen to the desired font, then touch the screen to close the menu. Finally, in terms of user interface, the previous page turn buttons just seemed to sit at a natural location and were natural to use. Swiping your finger if you are holding the reader now requires a second hand (again, minor but a strange downgrade). (Oh - there are still page turn buttons, but they are now in the middle of the bottom, and awkward to get at with one hand.
The upgrades - a faster processor means quicker navigation, page turns, etc. This is very nice. Also, you can scroll pages and it quickly flashes up each page as you scroll. Very Nice. The built in LED is OK, but the above problem with the decreased contrast means it is already harder to see, and using the marginal lighting of the LED required me to always use a larger font or I could not see the text without straining. Finally, the internal memory is increased, but again, who cares, as an SD card can be added for a few dollars.
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