Sony unveils 3rd generation eBook Reader, the touchscreen PRS-700
Sony unveiled on Thursday its third generation Reader Digital Book. The new Sony Reader, model PRS-700, will join the Reader lineup as the new “premium” model alongside the current Sony PRS-505 Reader. Some nice enhancements are in store for those of you prefer books in a digital format. The PRS-700 adds a bit of texture to the casing while still maintaining the same “paperbook-size” dimensions and light 10oz weight of the current Reader. The biggest enhancement to the new Reader is the incorporation of a 6″ electronic ink touchscreen. Yes, the Sony finally gets a touchscreen. Search, note taking with a virtual keyboard, and highlighting with a stylus are also now available in this newest model. You can even tap to zoom and turn pages with the swipe of a finger. Love it! If the touchscreen isn’t enough to make you want to go out and buy one then maybe a built-in LED book light, expanded memory to store 350 books and five font sizes for your reading pleasure will. All this and you still get 7,500 pages of continuous reading on a single battery charge. Awesome! The new Reader will be available in November for $400.
Tags: digital books, eBook, Reader, sony
this sounds amazing, I may have to pick one up for my relative this holiday season.
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How well does it handle PDFs? I have a lot of technical papers for work that I’d like to be able to cart around and read, but I haven’t seen much about how it handles them.
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@martin
check out mobileread for latest PDF solutions. I had the PRS-505 and it did not handle PDFs very well. Maybe if the PDFs were just text but I was trying to get programming manuals and it did not work very well. The problem is that PDFs are formatted for 8″ letter printing and the Sony reader (and amazon kindle) have 6″ screens. They PDFs just dont reflow very well. People have developed all sorts of way to try to improve PDFs but they are all a kludge. The only reader that does a good job with PDFs is the Irex Iliad. That has a larger screen and a much higher cost ($850 for the model with a tocuhscreen and wi-fi).
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I have had each of the Sony Readers and they keep getting better and better cant wait to get my little paws on this one!
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Well, this certainly doesn’t have any competition with that hunk of shit that Amazon calls the Kindle II.
Personally I think a physical keyboard is a complete waste of space on an e-reader. Any limited text input can be handled by means of a touch screen which, in turn, results in dramatically more viewing space. The screen and real estate are what matters and Sony understands that.
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I don’t see a price for this new product.
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