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• The Good: Light, compact, elegant design.
• The Bad: Backlighting seems spotty, not good in low light.
• The Verdict: Great for avid readers who like to load up on books but want to cut down their burden.
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SONY PRS 700 Portable Reader System: $399

One of the great things about a book, as we all know, is that you can curl up with it in bed, transcend the rigours of modern travel or simply escape while eating alone, bathing or performing other mundane tasks.

Those of us who truly love books (or text, as it is disdainfully called in this digital age), understand that the intimacy of the medium surpasses the mere content of words on a page.

And as we also know, reading a book online or printed out doesn't quite replicate the warmth of the original article.

Despite their benefits, however, books have an Achilles heel: Weight. Lugging books around (as any university student will tell you) is a pain. Enter the ebook, portable electronic devices about the size and heft of a small hard cover which display text and sometimes modest graphics with on-board and supplementary memory cards (memory stick or SD) which can store a virtual library.

These devices are still in their infancy and Sony has just produced the third generation of its reader, barely a year after the sophomore version was launched.

The PRS 700 doesn't replace the PRS 505 Reader but is a premium version. As such, it brings to the table several improvements and though it doesn't quite conquer the venerable book, it does provide an interesting alternative, especially for those who like to devour several tomes simultaneously.

Sony competes in this space with Amazon's Kindle, which was launched a year ago. The test version was clad in a black leather cover and the Reader itself had a black face. I must say my first impression was that the design is not as elegant as the PRS 505 but it may be that the predecessor I tested had a silver face and more rounded edges which is why it won a 2008 Red Dot award for design.

The dimensions are unchanged at about half-an inch thick (15 mm), and just under seven by five inches overall (17.8 cm by 12.7 cm), the frame holds a six inch diagonal screen which weighs a little more than 10 ounces (337 grams) with the cover.

Unlikle the PRS 505, however, gone are the two round multifunction thumb buttons at the lower left and right and the series of small rectangular buttons along the right edge of the screen.

They're replaced with a touch screen and seven discreet chrome rectangular buttons along the bottom of the screen, with an on and off and the new two level LED backlighting control built into the sides, top and bottom.

It comes with a built-in stylus, but readers can also simply turn pages by rubbing their finger or thumb across the screen, though it's a bit counter intuitive at first since to go forward you stroke from left to right which is directionally correct but the opposite action when turning the pages of a real book.

There's also support for a virtual keyboard, to allow annotations and notes and a volume control with headphone jack to play music while you read, though it might be interesting to read along with an audio book, especially while learning another language.

There's also a selection of five font sizes and double the internal memory at 512 Mb with two slots for SD and Memory cards taking the capacity of books and files which can be loaded into the hundreds if not thousands. There's added support for PDF files including zooming -- and an interesting feature is the ability to turn the reader on its side and orientate the text accordingly, making for a more comfortable reading in larger fonts. But there is still no support for colour.

Given the added features, the price has predictably jumped, to $399 from $299)

The big hurdle for eReaders has always been the screen. LCD screens do not reflect light - and therefore allow reading — in the same way as ink on paper which remains a much more natural and comfortable experience for the human eye.

In bright sunlight, however, I found it worked extremely well, which is test for any screen or indeed book. And with a 180 degree range of access, holding the Reader askew or propping it up while having breakfast also did not diminish the reading experience.

The technology at play is simple enough; The screen display is static in that unlike a computer screen it is not being constantly refreshed. This makes it easier on the eye but also, perhaps more importantly, means less draw on the battery and allows for what Sony says is 7,500 pages of uninterrupted page turning (I'll take their word for it, since I gave out long before the PRS 700 did).

The backlighting didn't work as well. In fact, in low level light it was uncomfortable -- although that may say more about my eyes than the product, since I can't read text on paper in low light well either unless I take my glasses off and just about press the page to my nose.

Previous complaints from a number of reviewers about the "rivers" of white space appearing because of the way the Reader justifies text also still apply.

Still, for avid readers — lets not call ourselves book lovers anymore, since it's starting to seem sol old school — it's a great device which will free up book shelves for years to come, an important consideration for those downsizing or even just starting out in the smaller confines of condominiums. For students, it's boon because it'll hold a year's worth of textbooks (assuming they are available) with none of the backbreaking strain.

It'll also be a plus for those who like to load up on books before a vacation.

In addition to PDF files, it also supports the ePub format which has been endorsed by publishing houses such as Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group, HarperMedia, Hachette Book Group, HarperMedia and Harlequin Enterprises Ltd and is the preferred format because it protects better against piracy.

Loading books is as simply as buying them online, there are about 45,000 titles to choose from currently, not as many as Amazon's 140,000 but enough to get started. I found my favourite authors well represented, including Elmore Leonard, whose breezy style, strange plot line and stranger characters would seem to lend themselves well to this format.

From there, it's a matter of plugging in the PRS 505 to your PC and via the supplied Sony software dragging and dropping it into the book.

Like paperback, the PRS 700 is almost small enough to slip into your pocket and will make revisiting tomes like War and Peace a lot less physically exhausting -- although it won't help with the mental numbness that seems to set in after 200 pages of Leo Tolstoy's prose.