Sony has lowered the price of its latest eBook Reader to better compete with competitors from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. The Sony PRS-T1 is now available for $129.99, which is about $20 lower than the original price.
The latest Sony Reader has a 6 inch, 600 x 80 pixel E Ink Pearl display with infrared touch support. There are also buttons below the screen for turning pages, returning to the home screen, and accessing other basic functions.
You can read EPUB, PDF, and TXT files on the device and there’s support for Adobe DRM. It also supports MP3 and AAC audio files and most commmon image formats.
The Sony Reader has 1.3GB of available storage space built-in, and a microSD card slot for expansion. It weighs 5.9 ounces and has a battery that’s good for up to a month of reading time, or about 14,000 page turns.
One thing Sony doesn’t currently offer is a “special offers” version of the Sony Reader. Amazon and Kobo have both offered lower priced versions of their latest eReaders by throwing advertisements on the screen saver and home screen. Sony’s $129 tablet doesn’t offer that option.
On the bright side, the Sony Reader is running a customized version of Google Android, and with a little work you can install third party Android apps and use the Sony Reader as a cheap, slow, E Ink Android tablet.