Sony Reader T1

Mobile Read has pics and specs for Sony's newest e-book Reader, the T1. The main new feature is that it is now made of plastic instead of metal.

Natte Hoffelder writes: "I’m disappointed. I feel that Sony continue to remain 1 step behind everyone else. I was hoping for something new and amazing, but Sony gave us an e-reader that is only an incremental improvement on the last generation."

And hardly that. The last generation of Sony's Reader was distinguished by its classy hardware, and by being small and light despite it. Unlike other brands, it offered models that fit in a pocket, had a nice feel--which is important!--and was only trivially more expensive for it.

Faced with the challenge of catching up to the Kindle and Nook in other respects, Sony instead gets rid of the only things it had over them.

• [GrymRpr]

  Rob, You sound like you expected better from sony.
  LoL

  • [Halloween Jack]

    There used to be a time when you could expect a lot more of Sony. I got my first Walkman about twenty years ago, and I was excited about getting a “real” Walkman instead of one of the wannabes. Even seven years or so ago, I could admire the slimline PS2 that I got (the first console that I’d owned since Pong, nearly thirty years earlier) as a decent little piece of kit that did nearly everything I wanted it to do, easily. Even when Sony went off and tried to establish its own proprietary format, and failed (Betamax, MiniDisc), you could admire the technical superiority.

    Now, not so much. You bought a Sony CD? Sorry about that rootkit, man. You bought a PS3? Sorry about your account info getting hacked into, dude.

• [phisrow]

  Unless there is some sort of killer feature lurking in the software, this thing seems DOA…

  A Nook with the same screen size(6 inch, 600×800) is a hair under $150(though the nook does lack a headphone jack). Even if the ‘price in dollars = price in euros’ rule of transnational pricing is in effect, it is overpriced. If not, it’s absurdly overpriced. 

• [CygnusXII]

  That’s sad. I have a Sony PRS 505 and absolutely love it. The nice thing about them being over priced, is Staples usually has their accessories on closeout, because no one buys them and eventually they have to get rid of their stock. Biglots had the PRS300 Pocket reader Refurbs on closeout for $50 and I bought a few of them for the Wife and Daughter, and ended up getting one for myself. The smaller size is actually nice, and feels like a paperback. I do wish they’d add wireless and other features, that the other companies have. I always thought the price curve was supposed to drop, over time, and features get added. One of the nicer features is the metal case. Going to plastic is sad. The slightly textured, anodized case makes it feel good in my hands. The 300 has a plastic case, but still feels kinda chunky, like a paperback. Sure, wireless, a keypad, a color screen / inks would be nice, but Sony would chanrge a ton of $$$ as usual.

  *edited

  Adding access to google search and wikipedia are nice features to add, but they are more expensive additions, while the market place is leaving them behind. One nice thing is the OS is hackable, on the current models, maybe this one will be hackable as well. I am going to buy a Nook next time, better hackability, color, and can add more features.

• [traalfaz]

  My first reader was a Sony, and at the time it was great, but they just didn’t keep up, with either features or with price.  I had a bit of momentary excitement when I saw this, but no, this is more of the same.  Feature poor, overpriced.  I sold my Sony reader a couple of months ago and bought a Nook STR, and I’d do it again.  Heck, even if the Sony were the same price ($140) as the STR, I’d still take the STR – the form factor is better.
  I never used the audio part of my reader, and I don’t know why I would.  I don’t want to have to keep music on two different devices, and my Sansa Fuze plays for about 20 hours on a charge and I have it always anyway.  Using the audio on the Sony reader just kills the battery.

• [Kimmo]

  Yet more Sony fail?

  Sadly unsurprising.

  • [townandgownie]

    As Gruber says, “If you see a stylus, they blew it”. 

    http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/new-sony-reader-t1-leaked/

    • [phisrow]

      It’s a cute and pithy quote; but really only accurate within a fairly specific context:

      In the battle between resistive touchscreen devices with UIs based fairly slavishly on desktop OSes, thus requiring precise poking of teeny soft-buttons(looking at you, classic WinMo…) and capacitive touchscreen devices with big finger-buttons, victory has gone pretty decisively to the latter. Anything left in the resistive camp is there because it’s cheap, not because it’s good.

      However, outside of that domain, it becomes increasingly inaccurate and ends up being downright absurd if you wander far enough(Wacom, for instance, has built their entire business on those crazy artist types who are willing to pay hundreds to thousands for the chance to “blow it” and stylus up their formerly pristine computers.)

      Offering stylus input for annotating documents on a pad-of-paper sized device will continue to seem like an entirely sensible choice until such time as finger-paint replaces pens and pencils as the handwriting tool of choice…

• [Jason McCoy]

   How is plastic an improvement.  I have a Sony E-Reader Pocket that is covered in aluminum.  Is it an improvement when your device breaks when you drop it?

• [Bill Sweet]

  How sad. I LOVE my PRS300, and also got one at Big Lots for the wife. Guess when it dies it will be the Nook for me.

• [Thad_E_Ginathom]

   only an incremental improvement

  Increments, like margins, are as big …as they are.

  Learn the language, Mr Hoffelder.

• [Michael Kalus]

  I have a PRS-650 and I am not quite sure why people like to dump on it. I also have a Kobo Touch, which is comparable though does offer wireless, do I have a need for it? Hardly. eInk and build in web browsers aren’t really a good combination.

  The one downside on the Sony is that they do not seem to maintain the reader software, unlike Kobo who seems to have a new software upgrade every month.

  • [MikeRich]

    Another 650 user here, and it is a great piece of kit – built like a tank and stylish into the bargain. The only thing it was missing was over-the-air downloads and I was hoping the 900/950 would have made it to the UK. Instead we’re getting this and I’m very disappointed that Sony have ditched the tough as nails all metal construction in favour of something much less robust.

    If, as some people have suggested, Amazon are about to announce a touchscreen Kindle this thing is DOA.

    Shame, but that’s Sony for you.

    • [Michael Kalus]

      Yeah I don’t see any appeal in this device either. The thing is that eReaders are quickly becoming a commodity and really the build quality was the one thing that gave Sony a right to charge a higher price.

      Personally my recommendations for others will be the Kobo Touch as it seems to be well supported and feels decent enough. Their desktop software is worse though than the Sony Reader Library.

• [konservenknilch]

  Sigh. I’m currently very happy with my PRS-650 (Reader Touch). It doesn’t have Amazon’s integration with Kindle&Whispernet or even a half-decent PC software (Reader library is just painful to use, thankfully you can also use it as a plain USB drive or use a 3rd party tool like calibre), but the hardware quality does make it a class of its own. Now that this is (presumably) gone, I don’t see what they have to offer again’st the next Kindle (apart from epub of course, but they’re hardly alone in that).

• [pKp]

  I’m a 505 user myself, though not by choice (it’s a hand-me-down, I think I would’ve gone for a Kindle if I’d had to buy an ereader). It’s pretty good, but as I live in Europe, the Sony ebook store doesn’t really work for me, so I have to trawl on dodgy ebook suppliers who don’t comply with the regional restrictions to get my books. I even had to resort to piracy after spending an entire hour looking for a legit way to buy the latest Stross. The device itself is quite good, however, as I have no need for wireless (that’s what smartphones are for).

• [hadlockk]

  I’m suprised a cottage industry of re-casing hasn’t popped up yet. For some of the more popular blackberries you can buy new (plastic) cases, but a metal case machined via a web service like emachine shop for a device like this (or one of those spiffy new mini nooks) would be fantastic. I’d pay $100 for a replacement black annodized polished cast aluminum case for my nexus S, easy. There can’t be more than $2 worth of metal in a case made like that.

• [johndberry]

  Everybody cheerfully talks about the object, but what we read is the page. How good is the typography? How well designed is the actual page of text, and how well is it designed to stay readable when the user changes the font or the font size or the line spacing?

  • [andygates]

    It’s a Pearl screen, and the current crop of Pearl screens are as lovely as print (I’m waiting for the cheapo commodity brands to get hold of Pearl).  It’s going to have to have angels flying out of every serif to do anything radically different.

• [City Robinson]

  What do you mean they blew it?  I have the 650 (with stylus) and it is a fantastic reader. The stylus is optional, you don’t have to use it. This is one of the few readers that can re-flow vector PDF files, which is a really great feature.

• [penguinchris]

  I too have a 505 and it’s a great bit of design (though there are some quirks) and works just fine for what I use it for (I primarily read Project Gutenberg stuff on it in plain text). I bought it at a Sony store (which otherwise I steer very clear of though I walk past it all the time at South Coast Plaza) where they were offering a steep discount at the time, and they threw in a really nice leather/suede cover for it which they normally charged $50 for at the time.

  I’ve looked at many subsequent readers from Sony and the others (including Nook and Kindle and less popular ones), and none come close. It just feels fantastic in the hand either with or without the leather cover – it’s satisfyingly heavy because of the aluminum (and mine’s a very nice dark navy blue) but not a burden to carry in a bag.

  I use Calibre to load stuff onto it so I don’t have to deal with Sony’s software (which I know from when I used a minidisc player is awful).

• [Sparg Otyebat]

  I’m happy with my 900′s sturdy build, the touch-turn/button-turn option, the legibility, and the sweet fact I can replace the battery when need arises.  Also love tapping on words I’m fuzzy on and seeing the definition appear.  For darktime reading I have the snap-on cover with LED on a bendy stalk.  With calibre available I don’t worry about file format restrictions or screwed up metadata.