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The PRS-650 that I have here is black, matt black so it does not show fingermarks. It is 17x11.5.8cm and the viewable screen is 12.3x9.3cm giving the notional 6inch measurement, the Pocket Edition was 5inch.

First as I am confused by the word ‘Touch’ in relation to the reader lets find a definition. It seems to be stroke or pat. The reason I mention this is that the Pocket Edition recently reviewed had a number of touch features.

Here movement around the screen and through the book is made almost by gestures as it is a very light touch required. However there are five bar buttons below the bottom of the screen that have jobs to do, so not entirely touch.

You of course need to get extra books on your device and for that you need a Windows XP Vista or 7 PC or MAC OS10 offering.

See also: eBook readers

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First a trip round the device on the top right corner is a stylus that fits down the right side. Along the top are two card slots one for SD and the other for Sony MS, there is also the power on/off slider control. Both the left and right sides as well as the back are clear, important if you are trying to slide the device into a pocket. The base has a micro USB socket, volume control rocker, 3.5mm jack for listening and finally a reset hole should the unit fail to respond.

Switching on requires you to hold the slider on/off button for a couple of seconds, full start up – from off – takes the best part of 30 seconds. However there is a sleep mode where you see a rather fine monochrome graphic telling you to slide and release the on/off switch to wake the unit up. In this mode despite thinking it must be using power it is not as this is E-Ink meaning that only changing the display like turning the page of a book is the only thing that uses power so I suspect most users will use the sleep mode as restore from it takes only 2 seconds. Should you want of need to switch off then slide and hold the on/off button for a couple of seconds and then answer ‘yes’ with a screen tap to the are you sure you want to switch off prompt that appears on the screen.

Connecting the 1.5metre micro USB to USB lead is the easiest way to get media from your PC to the E-Book however you will have four drive letters, one for the device where you store files, one for its system files including the ability to load files onto a MAC (I did not try this) and two more for the SD and MS card ports it has.

Apart from reading the main thing this E-Book can do is act as an MP3 player; files can be stored on a card or just transferred like books to the internal memory. It does not have an internal speaker so you will need earbuds or headphones.

The full manual is installed on your E-Book but there is a small printed Quick Start Guide with eight pages in English.

Now to try and give you the difference between the ‘Pocket’ already reviewed and ‘Touch’ edition the biggest is that the Touch is a fair bit heavier. While the logic of everything being by touch you can still use the controls along the bottom of the screen to change pages. My unit being matt black did not show the dreaded fingermarks.

The Touch version is more expensive so check to see if the functions you require are worth the extra price over the Pocket version. My searches at the moment failed to find the Sony Reader Touch Edition PRS 650 apart from the Sony Store link below at £199

http://www.sony.co.uk/product/rd-reader-ebook/prs-650