Sony Pocket Edition PRS-300
Filed under 5-inch eReaders
The Sony PRS-300 exemplifies a case of less is more. It doesn’t have all of the extra features and apps that many of its competitors have but its simplicity and no-nonsense design is actually quite refreshing. It does one main job and it does it very well.
Design
Like the PRS-600, this reader sports a sexy and stylish metallic case making it more robust and likely to withstand being jostled in bags and pockets. Attention to detail is evident in the design as Sony try and make the PRS-300 look “bookish” with an ersatz book spine on the left and a profile taper on the right. The back of the case also has a slight tactile feel to it, so it is a pleasure to hold in the hand.
So far so good. The screen is 5-inches on the diagonal which is an inch smaller than standard ebook readers. Of course, the very nature of the “Pocket” reader is that it is small and easy to carry around but for me, the screen size is a shortcoming of the PRS-300. Having a 5-inch screen means that you don’t get that much text on the page so you’ll be turning pages more often than you would with a bigger device. But it’s a trade-off that has to be made if you want a smaller, pocketable reader.
Measuring 15.75 cms from top to bottom and weighing a total of 220 grams, the PRS-300 is really only slightly heavier than most mobile phones. The length of the reader makes provision for the neatly arranged navigation keys which have been simplified into a circular navpad and four buttons which take you to the Home menu, zoom in or out on text , add a bookmark, and go back a step. The functionality of these buttons is contextual, based on what’s currently displayed on the screen. The zoom button is really useful. Given the size of the display, you might want to see what text size works best for you with a choice between small, medium or large.
Around the edges of the PRS-300 you have the contact points. On the bottom is the mini-USB and the 5.2V DC input. The top of the device gives you a power slider and small LED indicator that lets you know when it is connected to the power and receiving juice (it takes 2 hours to charge using the charger, 4 hours via USB).
Display
The PRS-300 has the same vital organ as almost all other ebook readers out there: an easy to read e-ink display. While the e-ink display does cause the reader to be less responsive and makes page turning sluggish, it nevertheless does well to prevent eyestrain as it only draws power when loading pages. Some criticise the lack of its own illumination, but that’s exactly the same as a real book and that’s exactly the point.
Software
File support on the PRS-300 is identical to the PRS-600, letting you read ePUB (the mainstay of purchased content), PDF, TXT, RTF, DOC, Word and BBeB formats. PDF files can be problematic at times as the formatting suffers when you zoom in from a whole page view with letters being orphaned at the end of sentences and paragraph returns arranging themselves rather randomly. As you read, you can bookmark pages, although there’s no option to annotate, as there is on the PRS-600, and there’s no search functionality. The PRS-300 is an ebook reader, pure and simple.
The PRS-300 can store over 300 paperback books in its 512MB of internal memory, well 380-odd MB after the system software takes a bite. But unlike the PRS-600, the Pocket’s memory is unfortunately not expandable with SD cards, a move that doesn’t make sense at all.
Battery life
The battery life has taken a small (very small) hit with Sony quoting 6800 page turns to the PR-600’s 7500, though in day-to-day use the difference is unlikely to be noticed.
Conclusion
Benefits
While the PRS-300 doesn’t really break into any new ground, we found that it actually doesn’t matter. So you can’t listen to music or carry thousands of books, but then we never really wanted to do that anyway. The PRS-300 looks and feels like a quality device and does what it is supposed to do, which is let you comfortably read your books.
Downfalls
If there is anything we’d change about the PRS-600 then it would be to expand the screen size whilst maintaining the dimensions of the device.
