Sony Portable Reader System finally available for pre-order

27 September 2006 11:03 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Sony’s Portable Reader System PRS-500 is finally up on the company’s Sony-Style website for sale.

It is due to ship on or before 31st October for $349.99. The device is an electronic reader designed to be carried instead of a book. Built around E-Ink Electronic Paper, the device has a 6-inch screen with a resolution of about 170 pixels per inch.

It supports a range of media formats, including BBeB Book, Adobe PDF, TXT, RTF, Microsoft Word, as well as MP3 and AAC7 audio, and JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image files.

Weighing 9oz, and measuring just 0.5-inch thick, the device is much smaller than a paperback, and will be useful for the sight-impaired, as text can be magnified.

Although it only contains 64MB of internal memory, that's enough for around 80 books, and it features a slot for Memory Stick media and SD memory cards so you won’t run out of reading material. Through the Reader connected to a PC, you can search the CONNECT eBook online store that sells books in the DRM-protected BBeB format, and then download it to the PC before transferring to the Sony Reader.

Battery life lasts about 7500 page turns, and is recharged in about 4 hours. For more, visit the SonyStyle website

Full tags

Gadgets, ebooks, Sony, Borders