I received my silver PRS-350 this morning (September 14). This is a mini-review with photos and some tips and observations.
NOTE: As I explore more of the features of the 350 I will add my comments in this post as I time allows.
Last Updated: September 17, 2010 at 1103 CDT
BUILD QUALITY
My PRS-300 was definitely built like a tank. The PRS-350 is not. It is solid feeling in your hands, and extremely lightweight. However, the metal skin on the front and back are extremely thin and the white plactic along the top, right side, and bottom sticks out like a sore thumb. So attraction-wise I would say the 300 was better looking. Build quality is way better in the 300 too. The 300 simply felt stronger and looked better cosmetically. However, the 350 is solid enough and still looks nice. The third photo below shows one of four seams around the 350 screen which show up prominently in this photo, this one is marked with a red circle. This is not quite the quality we have received from Sony in the past.
CHARGING
Good news here. You can charge the 350 using the provided standard USB to micro-USB cable via a PC. I also tried using the AC charger that came with my Blackberry and it worked fine. Ditto for the AC to USB adapter charger that came with my Kindles. DON'T waste $29 on a Sony charger. Your cellular phone charger will probably work. If not you can get a cheap AC to USB adapter for pennies!
Updated: You can read while charging via an AC charger. However, I was unable to read while the 350 was connected via USB cable to my Windows 7 PC even after ejecting the 350.
SCREEN QUALITY
One word suffices, WOW! It is as good as my Kindle WiFi. Sony actually got it right the third time around when it comes to touchscreen eInk. And speaking of touchscreens, the 350 screen is very responsive to the touch even using my fat fingers. selecting individual words took a bit of practice, but once I got the location of finger in relation to word correct, it is easy to do. Using the stylus is much more accurate and fast, but who wants to pull out the stylus?! Fingers work fine.
The eInk screen is deeply recessed (appx. 0.10") due to the addition of the infrared sensors around it. This recess has the habit of casting some long shadows under certain lighting conditions. In comparison, my K3 screen is recessed appx. 0.03" and so casts little shadow.
DEFLATING THE OVERBLOWN PAGE TURN SLOW DOWN ISSUE
I tested my 350 outside for an hour with the temperature at 90 degrees F, the humidity at 45%, and the heat index at 93 degrees. After about 40 minutes I did notice a slow down in page turning speed, and then used a stopwatch to time it. The page turns slowed to about 1.5 seconds in duration including the finger swipe on the screen. This is about identical to the issue I read concerning the new Kindle 3. No other slow down or erratic behavior was noticed.
My conclusion: At worst, I find this to be a very minor issue. I can live with 1.5 second page turns when in the heat as I will seldom be reading in that temperature. And let us not lose track of the fact that Sony rates the reader for up to 95 degrees F, so we were taking it to the edge of its design parameters. Therefore, we should expect issues at this temperature. And the same can be said for the K3.
USABILITY AND FEATURES
The touchscreen makes the 350 easy to use. Sony of course buries a few often used menu items two or three tiers deep, but they always have done that. Page turns are quick and I haven't noticed much ghosting. Sony has greatly increased the speed of connecting the Reader to the Reader Library software. With older readers it took a while for the software to recognize the reader once you connected the USB cable. With the 350 it seems almost instantaneous. Disconnecting and starting the 350 seems faster too, but I haven't tried loading dozens of books at once yet. I haven't tried the notes and other apps yet, but reading is a pleasure and page turns are easy to execute with a swipe of the finger or using the buttons. A couple of times I've tried to gently brush a speck of dust or cat hair from the screen and managed to turn a page! So page turning via touchscreen is very sensitive and effective.
FONT CUSTOMIZATIONS
Yes, the font customizations described in various threads here on MR work with the 350! Amazon locked down the new Kindle 3 so they haven't been able to do any hacks on it yet, so I was very pleasantly surprised and happy to see that at least the font hacks work on the 350. I only tried the one where you add a font folder to the 350 then call the fonts through CSS. BTW, the threads on MR showing how to do this require reading page after page of often conflicting info throughout a long thread. I wrote a document which gives you all the necessary info in a straightforward manner. I attached it to this post. My photos below show my 350 using Arial Rounded MT Bold rather than the stock fonts.
SCREENSAVERS (STANDBY SCREEN IMAGES)
The 350 comes with three JPEGs that it uses as screensavers (standby screen images). Screensavers is not the appropriate term, but since everyone probably knows what I mean by it I will use it. Sony uses the term Standby Screen. You can add and/or delete screensavers. If you are in Landscape mode and put the 350 in Sleep mode using a standard 600 x 800 pixel portrait style screensaver image, you will see the image rotated and it will have a lot of black on either side. I experimented and found that rotating an image 90 degrees clockwise and making it a screensaver prevents this ackward appearance. see the last two photos below.
FUNCTIONALITY
I'm slowly trying out various functionality and will add my comments thereof here as I get that chance.
The 2-column and 3-column split mode. This works only in Portrait mode; not in landscape. See post #9 below for photos and details. It basically allows you to quickly zoom in on and read a 2 or 3 column PDF. It works really well and is a nice feature I never knew I wanted but am glad I now have!
This is a two column PDF in normal view:
http://www.w5jck.com/PRS-350/prs350-...-activated.jpg
This is a two column PDF in 2-column view:
http://www.w5jck.com/PRS-350/prs350-...-activated.jpg
Update: According to yts06mgr in post #27, the 2-column and 3-column split works in Landscape if the original document is in landscape.
The Margin Cut mode. I could not get this to work in either Portrait or Landscape with the scanned PDF I used. Perhaps it will work with non-scanned PDFs. UPDATE: I tried this with a non-scanned PDF which in Landscape mode had 0.6" margins while in Original mode. Switching to Margin Cut mode only marginally (pun intended) reduced the margins to 0.5" which is still a huge margin. In Portrait mode Original mode the margins were 0.48" and were reduced to 0.38" in Margin Cut mode. So this apparently reduces PDF margins by only 0.1" in either Portrait or Landscape and with my PDF had very little effect. I would say it doesn't work well at all.
Dictionary popup window. When you select a word you get a small dictionary popup window at the bottom of the screen. Although a very nice feature that is easy to use, I find the text displayed in the popup to be too small for my eyes. There is no way to enlarge the text in the popup. Below is a link to a sample photo showing the popup. I've also encountered an anomaly when selecting a word near the bottom of the screen wherein the popup text is partially faded and thus extremely difficult to read. BTW, The Kindle WiFi dictionary popup is a little easier to read, but it too could use larger text.
http://www.w5jck.com/PRS-350/prs350-...nary-popup.jpg
PHOTOS
All of these photos show the 350 sitting on top of my slip case that came with my 300. All the photos show the font hack fonts.
Here is the Home page in Portrait mode:
A page from The Lord of the Rings in Portrait mode:
A page from The Lord of the Rings in Landscape mode:
Notice the seam (white line inside red circle) that shows up prominently in this photo. There are four seams like this around the 350 screen. This is not quite the quality we have received from Sony in the past.
A Portrait image as screensaver displayed when 350 is put in Sleep mode while reading in Landscape mode:
A Landscape image as screensaver displayed when 350 is put in Sleep mode while reading in Landscape mode: (NOTE: This is also how a Portrait image is displayed when 350 is put in Sleep mode while reading in Portrait mode.)
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