Reading Without Wireless – Do eReaders That Lack 3G Still Belong On Your Holiday Wish List?

Of the several dozen eReaders that have debuted or been announced this past year, many have followed in the footsteps of Amazon’s Kindle and included wireless connectivity for browsing and downloading books over the air. This convenience comes at a price — the extra hardware adds cost to the device and the ongoing connectivity charges are worked into the price of the eBooks themselves in some cases. However, the price gap between connected and non-connected readers started to shrink as more devices came on the market and competition heated up.

The two hottest eReaders — Barnes & Noble’s nook and Amazon’s Kindle — cost $259. Other devices such as the Plastic Logic Que and iRex DR 800SG cost more than $100 more, but also have larger displays. Among standard 6 inch screens, $259 is the new price to beat.

This summer saw the launch of three other buzz-worthy eReaders: Sony’s Touch and Pocket Edition Readers and Interead’s COOL-ER. None of these come with wireless built in but each offers a feature or two that the manufacturers hope consumers will find compelling.

Touch Me In The Morning: Sony Reader Touch Edition

Sony Reader Touch Edition
Size:	6″
Price:	$299
Storage	512MB
External Storage	Memory Stick PRO Duo and SD Card slots. (up to 16GB)
Supported Formats:	EPUB/ACS4, PDF, Microsoft Word, BBeB Book, text file formats, unsecured MP3 and AAC.
Content:	Sony eBook Store, Google Books, booksellers that distribute EPUB, public libraries.
Other Media:	Audiobooks, RSS Feeds.

This summer, Sony introduced it’s new generation of eReaders, including one with touchscreen functionality. The Touch Edition’s standard 6-inch display takes advantage of Viziplex’s e-ink, as many other eReaders do, but adds a layer on top of the screen to facilitate touch. This has the effect of muting the display somewhat — it’s not as bright as the Kindle 2 and other e-ink screens. I noticed this when I put the Reader side by side with a Kindle and the COOL-ER. But the muted screen didn’t hamper my reading experience. The touch layer also makes the screen reflective. Indoors it’s not an issue, but out in the sun reading took a bit more effort on the Touch than the Kindle and direct sunlight did the screen in completely.

When I first got a chance to play with this Reader I was impressed with its touchscreen capabilities. Responsive to both the taps of a finger and input from a stylus, the Touch Edition offered an intuitive way to turn pages, add notes, and navigate menus. After using it for a few weeks, I’ve found that I still like touch for navigating menus and choosing options but get frustrated because the device isn’t as responsive as I expect it to be. My taps registered most of the time yet I had to re-tap often enough that it was noticeable and frustrating. This is a problem on a $300 device.

The Reader’s slowness is also a problem. Every action takes just a little longer than it seems it should. Three to five seconds go by between hitting the Home button and the Home screen appearing. It takes long enough that I’m always tempted to hit the button again thinking that it didn’t register the first time. Turning pages also takes just a hair longer than I feel it should — the way the screen blinks, taking users out of a book’s flow, doesn’t help, either.

Sony is quite proud of the swipe to turn pages feature, but I don’t like it. The process is not as natural or intuitive as the company would have you believe. Swiping requires that I take my hand off of the device each time I come to the end of a page. I found this pretty annoying — I want to be able to keep my hands in the same place and simply press a button to move on to the next page. Perhaps the Kindle 2 has spoiled me, or perhaps my mindset with gadgets is different than that with books, or perhaps it’s a bit of both.

The Touch does have buttons for turning pages, but they’re both located on the lower left of the device and aren’t comfortable to press when holding it with two hands. Instead of the swipe, I’d rather just touch the right edge of the screen to advance to the next page.

The touchscreen allowed Sony to add more layers to notes and annotations. Inside of books, users can highlight text or add handwritten notes and scribbles that can be viewed or dismissed easily. I’d like to see the ability to make type-written notes appended to book pages as well. From the home menu users can either create handwritten notes and drawings or typed notes with an onscreen keyboard. The keyboard is slow and, when I used my finger instead of the included stylus, fairly inaccurate.

The Touch Edition offers a rich feature set overall. I like that I can load PDFs and Word documents on it without hassle or cost. The support for MP3s for listening to audiobooks or music is also a plus. The PC software makes organizing and adding new documents and books easy enough that I don’t really miss downloading books over-the-air. But at $299 ($40 more than the Kindle and nook) the advantages of touch don’t quite justify the extra cost.

Next: COOL-ER Reader »