First impressions: The Sony Daily Edition e-book reader
Photo: Sony
There's finally an e-book reader from Sony that doesn't require you to install software on your computer or connect to a PC to get new content, as the company's relatively new Touch and Pocket models demand.
Like the Barnes and Noble Nook, the Sony Daily Edition, with its wireless connection to the AT&T 3G network, arrived late in the holiday season and it's now back-ordered. And like the Nook, it offers both intriguing features and some performance drawbacks.
At $399, the Daily Edition is much pricier than the Nook ($259), Kindle (formerly known as the Kindle 2; $199), or most other readers on the market. Part of the reason is likely its unique 7-inch touchscreen display. Shaped differently than the squarish 6-inch screens on the Nook, Kindle, and most other models, this Sony's screen resembles a shrunken version of a 16:9 flat-panel TV screen turned on its end.
With that unusual shape, lines of type are shorter than on other e-book readers, which I'm finding a little jarring as I try out the Daily Edition we bought recently. However, there are more lines per page. While differing type sizes make it hard to directly compare this Sony to other readers for the number of words on a page, it's possible the longer screen allows for more words per page, and thus less frequent page turns.
You can also reorient the page to landscape mode with a few presses on virtual menus. That allows you to create a page with longer, if fewer, lines, but there's a glitch: The page content then doesn't paginate correctly. Some lines of type are cut in two, and when you turn to the next page, the first line or two of the previous page repeats at the top of the new page, requiring you to find your place.
In my informal tests, page turns on the Daily Edition were moderately fast, somewhere between the Kindle 2's speedy refreshes and the sluggish turns of the Nook and the Alex, a Nook competitor. You can turn by swiping a finger across the bottom of the touchscreen, from left to right (you can also reverse that direction, if you prefer). Though the screen could be more responsive, and requires harder pressure than an iPhone, for example, I quite like this page-turn method.
Should you not wish to swipe from page to page, however, the only other way to turn pages is to use two awkwardly-small turn buttons at the bottom left of the screen.
The Daily Edition's type, though adequate, is a little cloudier than that of the best-looking e-ink type, which comes close to the appearance of type on a page. That may well be a consequence of its touch capability, since adding that typically demands creating an additional layer within the e-ink screen.
Touch navigation is, however, a boon when using the Daily Edition to read newspapers–a use that's emphasized by Sony, as the device's name suggests. The ability to simply touch the headline of the story or section you want to read makes for easier browsing through a newspaper than on most e-book readers.
The Daily Edition also offers the ability, using its stylus, to hand-write annotations on e-books or to pen hand-written notes or drawings as separate files. You can also type text memos, though you can't type annotations, as you can on the Kindle, for example. (The Kindle, however, lacks any hand-writing functionality.)
The Daily Edition is elegant in design, with sturdy black aluminum construction and a built-in black leather case/cover. But so it should be for what it costs. My initial take on the Daily Edition: While it has some strengths, its high price and middling performance make it a less-than-compelling buy for most people.
–Paul Reynolds.
