Amazon caught most critics unawares with the Kindle. It was in fact so good that people finally began believing that electronic books had a future. Its only the readers / devices that needed to catch up. Once the fact that a market exists was proved ; Sony wasted no time in moving in for the kill. Presenting the latest in e-readers : the PRS 700.

The PRS-700 is one of the first and few devices to mix the use of an e-ink display with a touchscreen interface and is said to make interacting with books more natural; users make swiping gestures with their fingers to turn pages and use a stylus to select text, run a search or make notes with an on-screen keyboard. Sony also bills itself as the first to build in an LED-based reading light to supply a clear view without having to turn on a potentially intrusive outside light.

Sony claims a battery life capable of displaying 7500 pages. Its also got memory enough for about 350 books, thus negating the need for any external memory card slots. Word documents, PDFs as well as other proprietory documents can be viewed. Retails in November at USD $400.

Source