Sony says that its new 6-inch touchscreen e-Reader benefits from more paper-like page turns, an E-Ink display that's been optimized for long-term, ad-free reading and a splattering of social features. The Sony Reader PRS-T2 also comes with 2GB of onboard storage (with about 1.3GB available for use after initial setup) and microSD media card expansion and includes the company's public library lending feature allows library card holders to wirelessly borrow free e-books from over 15,000 public libraries in the U.S.
The Reader PRS-T2 features a 6-inch, 600 x 800 pixel resolution E-Ink Pearl V220 antiglare touch screen with a 16-level gray scale that promises improved continuous page turns and a smoother in and out pinch zoom. It comes pre-loaded with two English language and four translation dictionaries and supports ePub, PDF and TXT e-book formats, as well as JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP image formats. There's built-in Wi-Fi and a claimed battery life of up to two months with the wireless unit turned off (based on an average 30 minutes of reading per day).
The PRS-T2 offers users the ability to upload a short passage from books bought from the Reader Store direct to Facebook from the device, which will be accompanied by the book's cover, title and author. Sony has also thrown in some choice selections from the Evernote suite of online notetaking and archiving tools.
Users can save favorite passages from an ebook to the service, Evernote Web Clipper allows users to clip part or all of a web page for future viewing on a smartphone, tablet or PC and pages saved using Evernote Clearly are optimized for the T2's display, which washes away everything but the content for a distraction-free reading experience.
The 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.3-inch (17.4 x 11.1 x 0.9 cm), 5.9 ounces (167 g) Sony Reader PRS-T2 is supplied with a stylus for writing notes or annotating/highlighting text and is available in white, red or black for US$129.99.
Product Page: Sony PRS-T2
The $99.99 price includes the user being subjected to endless advertising which is hardly a good deal. It costs $139.95 (effectively per year) for the Kindle Touch without the special offers and sponsored screensavers. Read the reviews on Amazon and you will find thousands of dissatisfied users who have experience hardware failures and poor support by Amazon for their Kindle readers.