Touchscreens make everything better and more intuitive, right?
Not so fast: Sometimes adding touchscreen technology has drawbacks that seriously outweigh the benefits. Exhibit A: the Sony Reader Daily Edition.
It's an e-book reader that, like most others currently on the market, uses an E Ink screen. Unfortunately, while E Ink on its own is crisp and readable — not to mention easy on the batteries — it has a lower contrast ratio than the LCD screens most of us stare into all day long. But when you add a layer of touch-sensitive technology on top of the virtual ink, as Sony has done, the contrast ratio gets even worse, and the screen goes from pleasingly Etch-a-Sketch-like to downright murky and gray.
Another problem: Sony uses resistive-touchscreen tech, not the capacitive sensors used in most modern smartphones. That means it takes some real pressure to get the screen to respond. Combine that with E Ink's slow refresh rate (it can take several seconds for the screen to respond to a command) and you need Zenlike equanimity, or catatonic levels of lethargy, to use the thing without flying into a frustrated rage.
It could be we're just so jacked up from a steady diet of Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz updates that we're unable to grok the Reader's slower, more contemplative pace.
Apart from the touchscreen, the Sony Reader Daily Edition has a lot going for it. Its 7-inch screen is bigger than the 6-inch display found on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook. While an inch doesn't sound like much, it translates into substantially more real estate — and a very usable "landscape" view that puts two pages side by side.
The Reader's hardware is stylish, with a clean, conservative design and an attractive, leather-like flip cover. It is easily the most attractive e-book reader we've seen yet, and it's a marked contrast to the Kindle's Speak-n-Spell aesthetic.
