Sony Touch Edition: Can It Compete With The Kindle And The Nook?
By Best-eReaders, July 17, 2010
The Sony Touch Edition, quite surprisingly, has been Sony’s top-selling eReader. The reason for this is that it has wisely combined good price with good function. But how does it stack up against its more advanced rivals, particularly now that the Amazon Kindle and the B&N Nook have lowered their prices to $189 and $199, respectively?
Sony Touch Edition: eReader + eWriter
When the Sony Reader Touch Edition arrived in August last year, it retailed for $299, only $100 cheaper than Sony’s premium eReader, the Daily Edition.
The Sony Touch is a sleek-looking eReader with an expandable storage (SD or Memory Stick Pro), five font sizes, 2-week battery life, and Windows- and Mac-compatible library software. It can display Microsoft docs and PDF files, loan out books from libraries, and access thousands of Google Edition books.
Sony Touch’s big advantage over rival competitors is its touchscreen technology/writing capability. The touch screen adds a lot of cool factor even while providing better ergonomics for the device: with a swipe of finger across the screen, you can turn a page, a double tap on a word gives you its dictionary definition.
Even more significant is that the Sony Touch Reader’s screen also recreates the writing function of paper. Using the stylus, you can draw, scribble, add notes to margin of books, circle important passages, or edit personal notes.
Sony Touch Edition vs Nook vs Kindle: What Sony Touch Lacks
The Sony Reader Touch, with its writing capability, could easily have been the better device of the three, but its lacks of wireless service make it a less enticing proposition. As such, it doesn’t have the services that make the Nook and the Kindle quite compelling: wireless access to bookstores, wireless downloads, wireless syncing, and web browsing.
Further more, the screen’s 8 grayscale level makes the device look outdated when put side by side the Kindle and the Nook. The screen also suffers from a lot of glares, and markup functions need a lot of improvement.
Will Price Cut Make the Sony Reader More Competitive?
Instead of adding more cutting-edge features or technologies just like Amazon and Barnes & Noble has done to the Kindle and Nook, Sony simply adjusted the price of its Touch Edition Reader. The device is down to $169, $30 cheaper than its previous price.
The new price makes the Sony Touch $20 cheaper than the Kindle.
But if you decide to spend $20 more for a Kindle, here’s what you will get: larger selection of ebooks, periodicals, and blogs, international availability; 3G/Whispernet service that works in the US and some non-US countries; more than 60% bigger onboard storage; text-to-speech functionality; more font size options; and access to Twitter and Facebook.
The Nook, on the other hand, costs $30 more than the Sony Touch, but it also gives you more conveniences and more extra features, including: free in-store browsing; fast basic web browser; 3G +WiFi service; onboard keyboard for notes and annotations; bigger 2GB onboard storage; book lending feature; adjustable font style; and free Sudoku and chess games.
Sony should have lowered more the price of the Sony Touch.
Closing thought
When the Sony Reader Touch Edition arrived in August last year, it was thought to give the Amazon Kindle a serious competition because of its writing capability/touch interface. Competitive changes in the eReader world, however, show that Sony Touch has been left behind. Clearly the device has a lot of catching up to do.
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