Easy On The Eyes

A great feature of the firmware on board the reader is the ability to select from three different zoom levels on the text to suit your eye-comfort-zone, which can come in handy when you start importing all kinds of strange font-sized PDFs and have to zoom right in to make the text readable.

(Click the above image for the large version)

8-bit greyscale means that images are supported in the reader and you can view images in PDFs as well as regular images. This makes the e-reader also perfect for technical documentation and datasheets (as an electronics engineer, I am constantly referring to them).

After a few good books, it was time to charge the reader. I think the 6800 page-turns was a bit optimistic of Sony and realistically i'd say you are more likely to get about 4000 pages if you are doing nothing but flicking forward through them.

This is still a vast improvement over my Palm TX PDA which managed about 300 pages before giving up the ghost. And long before that, it would bitch to me about low battery every 5 minutes or so, like the world was going to end unless I find an electrical socket in time.

(Click the above image for the large version)

The bottom of the reader hides a few surprises, too. Alongside the mini-USB socket lies a power plug socket, 3.5mm headphone jack and volume rocker switch. Now, you are probably thinking... "wait, a 3.5mm headphone jack? - this thing plays music?!" - That's right, it plays non DRM'd MP3s and AAC files! - The inclusion of this feature is not superfluous either, as people often like to listen to e-books in bed and some like to listen to music while they read.