The curiosity around digital books has reached an all-time high now that there are two major players on the market with headline-grabbing devices. Both Sony and Amazon offer eBook stores and slick eBook readers, but because they use the same Electronic Ink screen technology and offer a similar book selection, it can be challenging to try to pick one brand over the other. So here to help, I offer up this comparison and yes, recommend a winner.

Amazon Kindle 2nd Generation Versus Sony Reader Touch Edition

Sony and Amazon each offer different versions of their product, but for the purposes of this comparison I’ve chosen the most popular and available of their designs, the Amazon Kindle 2nd Generation and the Sony Reader Touch.

 

 

Design

While both devices offer a 6” Electronic Ink screen, the Sony Reader Touch is significantly more compact and lightweight. At their heart Sony is a company of engineers and this is where they excel. Their product has an elegant finish in three colour choices, a metal trim, and an ergonomic design that includes a subtle bevel along the right-hand side, making it more comfortable to grasp between thumb and fingers, and a rounded spine, just like a book. They keep their buttons simple, just one row along the face, and then hide a number of ports along the edges, allowing them to include a number of options the Kindle lacks – AC adapter port, SD and MemoryStick card slots, and a hidden compartment for the stylus.

By contrast, the Kindle is more flat than ergonomic, quite wide and very large. The white finish makes it look simple, but there are more buttons than need be, making it easy to accidentally hit the wrong one. While the keyboard does the basic job, the keys are too small and well, like bubbles.

Reading

If you’re looking to read Jane Goodall’s Hope For Animals And Their World (which I recommend), it matters little which eBook Reader you use. Both reproduce their books as they look in print, complete with titles and illustrations, and both will remember the page where you last left off. Both allow you to place bookmarks, change the screen orientation, add notes, highlights, and both search a book by keyword, and to look up the definition of a word with an included copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Kindle has one important edge in that it can “clip” or copy extracts from books to your PC, but from there the advantages go to Sony with a faster page-turning speed, a more robust settings menu, and a wider range of adjustable font sizes. For those looking for extra large print, the Sony Reader Touch is the better choice.

Comparison of large print settings 

The Sony Reader Touch also has the better system for organizing content, using an icon-based menu system that sorts content by file type (books, notes, pictures) and into collections.

The Kindle simply dumps all of your content into one single list that you can then use filters to try to find the type of content you’re looking for.

Storage Capacity And Formats

With 2GB of internal memory (approx. 1,700 books) the Kindle can hold significantly more books than the Sony Reader Touch which has just 400 MB (approx. 350 books). The twist here is that you can expand the memory of the Sony Reader beyond what the Kindle offers by adding an SD or Memory Stick Duo Pro memory card, potentially adding several GB more, but for an added cost. Most users are unlikely to load their devices with more than a couple hundred titles, so for now the point seems moot.

Both devices use their own proprietary eBook Store format, BBeb for Sony and .AZW for the Kindle, with neither being able to play the files from the other’s store.

For other file formats (.txt, .doc., .pdf) your files have to go through a conversion process, made easy on the Sony Reader with included software for your computer and complicated on the Kindle where you must e-mail the files to Amazon and wait for a reply e-mail to download them back.

While both devices can convert Adobe .PDF files with mixed results, the Sony Reader Touch has the better rate of success in retaining a file’s original format and graphics.

The Kindle reaches out to books from other sources by supporting unprotected Mobipocket files, useful to those who were early adopters of eBooks, but the more useful advantage belongs to Sony with support for ePub files, allowing access to books from local libraries as well as titles from Google Books.

Photographs And Music

Both devices display photographs (JPEG, PNG, GIF, and BMP) as crisp, black-and-white images, but while the Kindle can merely display them in either a windowed or fullscreen view, the Sony Reader Touch offers full zoom controls, allowing users to truly zoom into their images.

Touchscreen zoom controls on Sony Reader Touch 

Both can play Audible Audio Books as well as MP3 files, but the playback controls on the Kindle are remarkably primitive. You can merely turn on or off the music, no option to even see the tracks or change them.

By sharp contrast, the Sony Reader Touch has full playback controls and can also accept unprotected AAC audio files (as used by iTunes).

eBook Stores

Both companies offer a robust online store (300,000+ titles for Amazon and 400,000 + titles for Sony) of digital books that include the latest bestsellers and a selection of free content including sample chapters and titles from the public domain. Both update their catalog on a regular basis.

Amazon offers a more international focus with their store now reaching more than 100 countries, something that is reflected in their ability to offer newspapers and magazines from around the world.

By contrast Sony’s store has a stronger local focus with a large selection of French-Canadian books, titles from independent Canadian publishers, and support for collections from local libraries. Sony even provides an online tool you can use to find a library in your area.

While Sony offers French-language support and software for both Macs and PCs, Amazon is limited to English users on Windows-based machines.

Special Technology

The Kindle includes a free 3G cellular connection that allows it to access the Amazon store directly. This makes it incredibly easy to browse, buy, and download books, especially while traveling. You can even use an included web browser to surf the internet for free. The only downside is that the wireless connection can be a drain on the battery life, but this can be managed by turning it off when not in use.

Sony’s touchscreen also offers an improvement, making it easier to quickly and intuitively navigate through the device’s menu systems and to use the included stylus for accurate marking of text and including handwriting in recording notes.

This is Sony’s second touchscreen design, the first drew complaints from some users that the added layer to the screen lessened the clarity of the text. In response Sony has reduced the thickness of that layer and the improvement shows.

While both technologies offer significant benefits, the touchscreen is the one I feel you’ll use the most.

Other Reading Options

When it comes to experimenting with different ways that you can access your purchased books, Amazon currently leads with the most options. The Kindle includes text-to-speech software that allows it to read aloud books to you, automatically turning pages as it goes. It includes both a female and male computer voice with adjustable reading speeds. The results are mixed, the voice tends to run words together and it only works on select titles, but it does work.

Amazon also offers a Kindle App that allows users to sync and read their books using their iPhones and soon BlackBerry and Android-powered devices.

Both companies offer software for your computer, allowing you to read your books on your monitor. Here Amazon only supports Windows-based system while Sony supports both Mac and PC.

The Winner – The Sony Reader Touch

While I can easily recommend both eReaders, the Sony Reader Touch has the edge with a better design, more intuitive interface, and polished features. It does a better job of reading Adobe PDF files, offers the larger font size for those with poor eyesight, and better support for Canadian publishers and Mac users.