Sony Book Reader Fight
The battle of the giants, Sony eBook Reader and Amazon Kindle is fierce. As they are the biggest players on the eBook readers market, I was wondering which one is better? Why do i care? Because I’ve wanted one for so long, but they are not available in my country yet. Perhaps i should order them from Amazon, were the Amazon Kindle is $399 and the Sony eBook Reader costs $299
First Look : Sony Reader 1 - 0 Amazon Kindle
From the beginning, there are two obvious advantages of the Sony Reader. The first one, is the price: Amazon Kindle is a hole $100 more expensive. And second, the design: Sony eBook Reader looks way better. It is more compact and really resembles a book, while the odd shape of the Kindle and it’s keyboard are just hideous. Now, it is true i am kind of a Sony fan (as a commenter noticed in my post with Christmas gadgets for men), but I’ll do my best to be impartial here.
Technical details: Sony Reader 1 - 1 Amazon Kindle
Both gadgets use the epaper technology for their displays. That means we’re talking about a high-resolution screen that looks like real paper and are economical and safe for the eye. Also, the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, both have the same size screen: 6 inches. So, from this point of view, these things are similar.
The Sony eBook reader has an internal storage space of 192 MB and can use Memory stick/ SD cards. The Amazon Kindle can use SD cards too, but there’s no mention about an internal ROM memory (there has to be one though)…
Amazon are trying to beat Sony by introducing wireless Internet connectivity on their ebook reader. The Kindle does not use Wi/fi, but EVDO, the high-speed data network also used by cell phones. That means you’ll have a great Internet coverage, as long as you don’t go somewhere in no man’s land… Sony eBook Reader on the other side has no Internet connectivity yet. Perhaps on the 3rd generation…
Daily usage: Sony Reader 2 - 1 Amazon Kindle
It seems to me Amazon stuffed some interesting technology inside their Kindle but forgot about its main function: it’s an ebook reader, not else. So, what will you say when you’ll find out the gadget does not support Adobe PDF files, RTF and DOCs. That’s because it uses a specific file format. Of course, you might be able to convert your DOCs and PDFs with the help of a PC (you can’t with Macs), but that’s just a lot of wasted time, right? On the other side, Sony Reader supports PDFs, DOCs, TXTs, etc.
Also, with the Kindle, Amazon is attempting to turn books into a service. That’s why you get the wireless connectivity: so you could buy books from the vast collection (90.000 titles) in their Kindle Store. You might have been expecting to be able to read you favourite RSS feeds and blogs for free, since you have integrated EVDO module? Well, guess again, you can’t. You have to pay: 1$ for every feed, 1$ for every blog. Of course, Sony eBook Reader offers these for free, but you have to sync your gadget with a computer/laptop connected to Internet…
It’s true Amazon Kindle offers some other features, like Wikipedia access and dictionaries, but what’s the point since the main functions are neglected?
Which one would i buy? Sony Reader 3 - 1 Amazon Kindle
The conclusion is pretty simple. The main functions of both gadgets are ilustrated in the above picture taken fromGizmodo.com. You are asked to choose between the great looking, cheaper and the more functional (supports all the important text formats) Sony Reader or the big, ugly and money hungry Amazon Kindle, with its EVDO wireless connection and the big Book collection. Personally I’ll go for Sony eBook Reader. How about you?
Remember, you can easily get both of them: the Amazon Kindle for $399 and the Sony eBook Reader for $299
Both of these units are rip offs. Let me tell you why!
You can buy a 7″ LCD picture frame that can display your digital pictures for $75. Then why should someone pay for the Sony or Amazon readers $300 or $400?
If some one could add to a picture frame the necessary hardware/software combination that could display ebooks in ANY format, and could market it for $99 there would be a sure winner. If they could also add a wireless radio in to it, with a built in web browser like the Kindle, it would replace the lap top for many travelers.
Irrespective of the format of the ebook, I should be able to read any book on any format, that I don’t have to convert to LIT or PDF! I will not pay money to read the books ONLY in the Sony format or Microsoft format.
Come on Chinese manufacturers, it is time to design and dump millions of these gadgets for under $99!
I have the Sony Reader and think it’s great. I was quite suprised SONY supported so many formats, not typical for SONY. However SONY does have some short comings. First the software that comes with the product is garbage.
I’ve read many reviews and I think many of the reviews miss 1 HUGE point. In the long run Amazon is MUCH cheaper than the sony device. Amazon might be $100 more but buy 10 books and soon you will break even. (Most of the books I’m interested in cost $20 or more on paperback). SONY tends to give a little discount for the eBooks but Amazon caps all books at $9.99. While both suffer from a lack of supply I tend to find SONY has much less support than Amazon. This has been a real fustration for me. Personally I would like to take full advantage of my reader and purchase or re-purchase books so that I may store them on my reader. But this is a vent on just ebooks alone.
Where SONY does shine is that there are a lot of good 3rd party tools (free) that allow one to convert HTML/Text/MS Word files to SONY’s format, which is optimized for their display.
I’m very happy with my SONY Reader and think it looks very slick, batter life is amazing. But if I could redo the purchase I think I would go with Amazon for the reasons mentioned above. Having the ability to immediately(EVDO) go online a buy a book very cheap ($10) is really the heart of what makes the eBooks reader so attractive.
I have a sony ebook and am not happy with it at all. I have had nothing but problems. I purchased the extended warranty and have nothing but problems getting them to honor it. It freezes and I have to push the reset button to recharge it. Then it won’t remember my bookmark. I would not recommend it to anyone until they get the issues addressed.
I own the Sony ebook reader and am real happy with it. Not only will it work with many formats, but 3rd party software exists that will allow you to make ebooks from even more, including Microsoft’s Ebook format (LIT) so you can buy almost any format (except kindle or Mobi) and read them on sony.
I have the Sony Reader and for the purpose of reading a book, it is great. (getting it form Sony and viewing it on the device).
I noticed it would freeze when I tried reading pdfs with links embedded into the file, but would get it to work by turning off the device. There was no need to re-size the file but when zooming into the file, there were some strange display issues but still legible.
It is great for taking to the gym or other places since the battery life lasts practically forever and it is sleek and small enough to fit in a small purse.
I have read that kindle offers a user the ability to buy books directly from amazon, but in reality, how many books can you really read at one time and is there an urgency to get a book then and there? Waiting to get to a PC isn’t that big of a deal. And if you are purchasing a reader, chances are you have PC connectivity, so it is not a big deal whether you have to connect to a PC…thinking about it, I have a iphone, where I could purchase widgets directly to it and sure it is nice to have, but I noticed it really isn’t’ necessary over time but just made it just too easy to spend my money. I figure it is the same idea for Sony reader verses the Kindle.
I haven’t tested the kindle, but if you are torn, I hope this helps.