Sony Reader Pocket Edition PRS-300 Review

Value for money: 4 out of 5 stars, "Best Buy"

PC Advisor were quite taken with the PRS-300 Pocket Edition from Sony, and particularly liked its long battery life, stylish design and solid build quality. By addressing criticisms of earlier models regarding access to ebook material, Sony has been able to create a very impressive and functional device that should appeal to a broad range of people.

Computer act!ve were generally very impressed with the Pocket Edition PRS-300 from Sony, and felt that it should have wide appeal to those wanting a basic ebook reader that is easy to read and simple to use. The PRS-300 however doesn't have some of the features of other models, and its small size could either be a positive or negative attribute depending on your taste.

Value for money: "satisfactory" (5 out of 10 points)

"... the Pocket can read ePub files, plus a good selection of others, so you can still use the Cooler Books store. The Pocket's menu system isn't helpful, as it labels PDFs as books, thereby confusing your library. At least the quality aluminium buttons feel good, unlike the loose plastic ones of the Cool-er. The numerical buttons down the side of the Pocket allow you to select specific pages but we found them awkward to use and otherwise superfluous. ... While the Sony Pocket is the best all-rounder, it has an unintuitive menu and a small screen. ..."

"... manages to impress ... Its stingy non-expandable storage is really the only thing about it we don’t like, while the design and build quality puts the Cool-er, Cybook Opus and even the Amazon Kindle in the shade."

"... We liked the fact that the original Reader had page-turning buttons on both sides. The Pocket Edition's central controls simply aren't as convenient to use ... Although the pages turn reasonably quickly, we found that the controls still had too much lag to convince a book reader to give up their dead-tree copies. The controls are buffered too, so if you press a button twice in frustration, the command will be carried out twice. Unlike the original Reader, the Pocket Edition has no memory card slot ... With little improvement over the original model and lots of missing features, the Pocket Edition isn't Sony's best Reader."

Value for money: "very good" (5 out of 6 stars)

"It has its limitations, but it's a wonderfully built eBook reader at a very affordable price."

"Some might see the PRS-300 as something of a step back. ... There is no memory expansion, so you are limited to the 512MB onboard, but still good for over 300 books. You also don't get to play music at the same time, but then we've never really wanted to do that anyway. If there is anything we'd change then it would be to expand the screen size whilst maintaining the dimensions of the device ... If you are considering investing for the first time, it is worth checking out what you will have access to by browsing the various bookstores online. The PRS-300 isn't cheap, but it looks and feels like a quality device and does what it is supposed to do ..."

"Sony has missed an opportunity to pitch the Pocket Edition as the iPod Nano to the Touch Edition's iPod Touch. Sure the Pocket is a fine bit of kit as far as it goes - it's well made, light, compact and provides a fine reading experience - but at £180 its far, far too expensive for something which has had so much functionality stripped away. If the UK Reader line-up was priced closer to the US range – at $199 and $299 (£120 and £180) - we would be far more enthusiastic."

"For: Looks great. Good screen. Plenty of commercial support.
Against: Page turn times. Unit price. Accompanying software."