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Sony Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1) PC Magazine

18.10.11

The Reader Wi-Fi sports a 6-inch, touch screen E Ink Pearl V220 display, weighs just 5.9 ounces, and is less than four tenths of an inch thick. Depending on which color you choose, the front bezel is red, white, or (like my test unit) black glossy plastic. The tapered back panel is in a soft touch matte material that prevents the unit from sliding around on a table. It's also quite comfortable to hold. 

There are five hardware buttons in all along the bottom; aside from those two, there are also Home, Back, and Menu buttons. The bottom edge of the reader holds the microUSB charger port, a recessed Reset switch, a power button, and a standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack you can use to listen to audiobooks or MP3 music files. Along the left is a covered microSD memory card slot. I admit was I worried to see a decidedly old-tech, plastic stylus in the package, but it turns out it's just for a separate handwriting mode, which is useful for taking notes when you don't have paper or a pen handy.

Reading, Page Turns, and the Reader Store You get six available fonts and eight adjustable font sizes, and you can also adjust the brightness and contrast. To my eye, the font choices are more attractive and not as bold as the new Amazon Kindle 's ($79, 4.5 stars) three fonts. Sony builds in 12 dictionaries, including two English-language (American and British), and 10 translation from other languages such as French, German, and Spanish. At any time, you can double-tap a word to get its meaning or translate it into five other languages. You can also bookmark pages, as well as take notes by writing on the page or highlighting text, either with the supplied plastic stylus or your finger.

While reading, you can turn pages either by swiping to the left or right, or by using the hardware page turn buttons on the bottom left. This means you can only use the device one-handed with your left hand, but that's not a huge issue. You can also pinch zoom text in and out, which is an impressive touch. Page turns themselves were quick, though it still flashes the entire screen every page turn; the latest Kindles and Nooks employ a caching system to reduce the frequency of full-screen flashes.

Sony's Reader Store contains over two million titles. You can also borrow free books from the local public library—unlike Amazon, Sony cheerfully provides ePub support in all its Readers. You can also download Google public domain books, and access Wikipedia and Google Search on the Web.

Buying books directly from Sony isn't much fun, though, as the Reader Store always gives the impression that it's about to crash. First, it takes a long time to connect and start up. The home screen is attractive and has a promiment search feature at the top. But tap Browse, and you'll have to drill down multiple pages before you begin to see any books at all. The store also has a penchant for flashing each new screen several times, over a period of two or three seconds, which feels sluggish and becomes distracting quickly. If I wanted a book, I could get to it, but mainly I was happy to be in and out of the store as soon as possible.

A Few Quirks, Other Features, and Conclusions I also ran into a few actual bugs. Logging into the Reader Store using my Sony account the first time proved difficult, and required several tries where it threw me back a screen or two. When it finally worked, the Sony Reader Wi-Fi unceremoniously said, "Your device is successfully authorized (-50500)," which didn't exactly inspire confidence. Several times during the review period, I returned to find the reader screen blank, instead of showing a book cover in sleep mode like it's supposed to; I had to power cycle the unit to restore operation each time.

You're also more limited in terms of device and app support. Sony's Reader Store ecosystem has Android, Sony Tablet, PC, and Mac apps, but nothing for Apple devices, as Apple rejected Sony's Reader app earlier this year.

Sony says the Reader Wi-Fi lasts for up to five weeks or 14,000 continuous page turns on a single charge. There's a basic file manager for organizing your books and music. The Sony Reader Wi-Fi stores up to 1,200 books with its 2GB of internal memory, but there's also a microSD card slot on the side. My 32GB SanDisk card worked fine; using a card like that, you could store plenty of music or several lifetimes worth of additional e-book reading, or even larger PDFs with lots of graphics.

So the Reader Wi-Fi itself is mostly a winner, even if the Sony Reader Store could still use improvement. At this point, Sony finally has the right hardware and pricing; now it's a matter of whether the company can catch up with the competition. The Amazon Kindle, our current Editors' Choice for ebook readers, lacks a touch screen, and you need to spend $30 extra if you want an ad-free version. But even that Kindle is still $40 less expensive than the Reader Wi-Fi, and Amazon also offers a more comprehensive book store and digital app ecosystem. (The Amazon Kindle Touch would be a better comparison because of its touch screen, but that model isn't out yet; we'll review the Kindle Touch separately as soon as it's available.) The stubby B&N Nook Touch is another solid alternative; while it's a little larger and heavier, B&N has also done a better job with its own ebook store, and B&N also has iPhone and iPad apps available for the Nook.

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