as Amazon, Apple or Barnes & Noble, but it remains a serious competitor. Its newest and prettiest model will be available stateside this week, and is definitely worth a closer look.

Sony will release three new e-reader models this fall: the Pocket, Touch, and Daily Edition, all featuring E Ink displays with optical touchscreens. According to Sony Style USA, the silver Pocket Reader is available for order now and will ship tomorrow (the 14th); the pink version can be preordered and should ship Thursday (the 16th).

When Gadget Lab looked at Sony’s models earlier this month, they discussed their strategy in the market. “The bottom line is we didn’t want to compete on price,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading business division. “We wanted to build quality and overall experience. We want to give consumers the feel of buying an e-reader, not a toy.”

The most attention-grabbing feature of the new Sony is the fact that its E Ink screen responds to touch input. The touch sensors aren’t actually in the screen, but are triggered by infrared sensors all around the screen’s edges. Invisible beams respond when your finger breaks the plane of the screen — just like security devices in a spy movie. You don’t even have to actually physically touch the screen for the sensors to respond, just get within the sensor’s threshold.

The Sony PRS-350 has the same Pearl high-contrast E Ink screen as the Kindle, but in a slightly smaller form factor (5? instead of 6?). According to iReader Review (and as you can see from the gallery after the jump below), this knocks the image and text quality of the old Sony Readers out of the park. And because the new Pocket Reader doesn’t have a hardware keyboard, the whole device is only 5 3/4? x 4 1/8,” and just a shade over 1/3? thick.

Like all Sony Readers, it supports both ePub and PDF with or without DRM. The body design is gorgeous, and the build quality is reportedly top-notch.

So we have a tiny, touchscreen E Ink reading machine that might even display images and tiny fonts better than the new Kindle. Did Sony just make the long-awaited “paperback e-reader” to move the whole show?

No; unfortunately, they didn’t. Here’s why.

The Sony Pocket reader has no internet capability at all. No Wi-Fi, no 3G. Nothing.

This means that while it’s terrific for reading books, you can’t use it to read anything else. No checking email, no using Instapaper, no Google Reader.

Speaking of Instapaper and RSS readers — there’s also the specter of the Amazon App Store, which promises to add a lot more functionality to the Kindle. Functionality that’s likely to be dependent in no small part on web access. Even if Sony starts thinking seriously about casual gaming on their e-Readers — and frankly, I think moving in the other direction and putting e-Books on PSPs is a lot more likely — they’re still moving uphill.

In a follow-up review, iReader Review notes that actually loading books onto the Pocket Reader is a giant pain. “It’s not just that you can’t get books to Sony 350 wirelessly in 60 seconds. You can’t get books to it in 60 seconds period… Sony proves that it’s a hardware company and not a software company.” He notes several other user-experience problems with the device, too, including an imagined vignette where Sony asks its software design team to take this magical device and completely screw up the UI.

Finally, it costs $179; $10 less than the 3G Kindle (which gets you free 3G forever), and $40 more than the Wi-Fi only Kindle ($30 more than the Wi-Fi Nook), both of which still get you wi-fi. A 20-25% markup is a lot to pay for a touchscreen.

Face it — two months ago, the Sony Pocket Reader would have been a cannonball in the world of e-readers. It would have been cheaper and more capable than nearly anything on the market. But the Kindle 3, with its improved screen and WebKit browser, is actually turning into something more than a repository for e-books.

Sony’s made a gorgeous one, and I think it will appeal to many, many people. Seriously — it’s appealing to me. But it doesn’t look like the future.

P.S.: Whatever you do, don’t try to find this e-reader by searching for “Sony 350.” Sony makes a kajillion products from cameras to DVD players that all have “350? somewhere in their official handle. It’s a nightmare. Why they don’t just call the thing “Pocket Reader” is completely beyond me.

All images courtesy of iReader Review.

See Also:

• Simple Tip Turns Kindle into Ultimate News Reader
• Amazon Kindle Third Generation With 3G + Wi-Fi
• Showdown: Kindle 2 vs. Sony Reader
• Sony's E-Book Reader Adds Touchscreen, Wireless Downloads
• Despite Reports, B&N Nook Competes Just Fine, Thank You
• Wi-Fi Only Nook for $150 in Best Buy

Authors: Tim Carmody

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