Two weeks with a Sony PRS-700: Audio, and ‘adios’

By Chris Meadows

And now I come to the end of my two-week experiment with the Sony Reader PRS-700. It’s been interesting, and I’ll have some last thoughts on the whole experience after the jump. But as I was getting ready to package the device up, I realized there was one last function that I hadn’t tested yet: how it played audio.

Audio

The device came pre-loaded with two piano jazz MP3s by Jun-ichi Nagahara, so I plugged in my earphones and listened through them. The control scheme was simple enough: a pause button, a slider showing how far through an audio file one is, and the page-turn gestures or buttons to flip forward or backward.

The sound quality was pretty good, though I would expect it to be on a device costing $400 suggested retail. Presumably you would use this to play audiobooks, thus making the 700 a “device for all seasons.”

However, devices that just play audio and are about the size of your thumb are getting less and less expensive all the time, and I have a hard time seeing many people using a device the size of a trade-paperback to listen to audio regularly instead of one of those.

“Adios”

This morning, I knew it was time. The two weeks were up. Technically, I could have waited until tomorrow, but I had done just about all I wanted with the device anyway, and preferred to avoid giving myself the chance to procrastinate. So I used the “format internal memory” option in Settings to remove everything I’d loaded on, packed it back up in its box, wrapped that box in bubble wrap, and sealed it up in a bigger box for shipping. (Ironically, it was an Amazon.com box.)

Then I took it down to FedEx Office (nee Kinko’s) and sent it away. The Sony rep was kind enough to pass on Sony’s account number so I didn’t have to pay for the return shipping fees. They should have it tomorrow.

Retrospective

The PRS-700 and its e-book reading ability came in very handy over the last couple of weeks, some days of which were quite busy. It gave me something to read on the road, on a triangular trip from Springfield to St. Louis to Columbia and home again. It gave me a new way to experience e-books, and educated me about how e-ink works.

That being said, I did not find it worth even the discounted price Sony offered me if I wanted to keep it. For one thing, being between jobs right now I have to watch what I spend. For another, for the amount of money they wanted, I could get a 32-gig iPhone 3G S (well, all right, I’d also have to pay $20 or so extra per month for smartphone fees, but still).

I’m going to miss the PRS-700, but only in the same abstract way I would miss any neat toy I got to play with for a while. It did not impress me as the “one true way” to read e-books; I’m still perfectly happy reading them on Stanza on my iPod Touch.

That’s not to say the 700 is a bad device at all. It had a few little quirks I didn’t like, but I was able to read close to a dozen novel-length books on it with minimal eyestrain and a fairly long time between battery recharges. Loading books was quick and easy, and most menus were intuitive (though I still think placing the Table of Contents under “options” is a bad idea).

One of the Internet friends with whom I chat regularly has a PRS-700 and loves it. He apparently bought it when it was cheaper than the Kindle, and says he likes being able to come home from his job as a network administrator and read e-books from something that is not a screen. The connectivity issue does not bother him; he also has an iPhone which he can use for that.

If you like reading e-books, want a bigger screen than the iPod Touch or iPhone, and don’t want to support Amazon, the PRS-700 may be for you. At least for now—e-ink is getting better and prices are getting lower day by day. In a few months, who can say what an even better e-ink tablet will cost?