Sony Digital Paper System DPT-S1 Review
by Ganesh T S on December 17, 2015 8:50 AM ESTConcluding Remarks
The Sony DPT-S1's feature set and pricing make it clear that business users are the primary target market. Posts on various e-reader forums indicate that the device is gaining popularity amongst academics and lawyers. Despite the business / enterprise focus, there is nothing preventing power users from using it as a standard e-reader. In fact, the device, when used in the landscape mode with a two-page thumbnail view (a feature introduced in firmware v1.5.50.1180 released on December 15, 2015), can simulate holding a real book with two pages side by side. The availability of a pen / stylus can also lend itself to some interesting applications for casual users. Writing on the plastic surface of the Sony DPT-S1 feels closer to writing on actual paper compared to glass surfaces in other tablets.
Sony DPT-S1 - Not Necessarily an 'all work, no play' Device
Even though I try to avoid printing out documents / papers and read them on a computer monitor or tablet, I can't totally avoid the usage of a printer. Since purchasing the Sony DPT-S1 a couple of weeks back, I haven't printed out a single document. One of the aims of the Sony DPT-S1 is to reduce paper clutter. I have to say that it succeeds nicely in this respect.
Coming to the business end of the review, we will analyze the pros and cons of the Sony DPT-S1 first.
On the plus side:
- The unit is lightweight, yet solid. The experience is very similar to carrying a folder with a few sheets of paper.
- The unit has great ergonomics and is perfectly size for technical documents
- It is a great vehicle to bring out the advantages of E-Ink
- No strain on the eyes, thanks to the absence of backlighting
- Visibility under bright light / outdoor environments is perfect
- The battery life is great - more than a couple of weeks between charges even with regular use (2 - 3 hours a day with a page or so of writing on each day)
- Annotation capabilities with the pen input is great for note taking and other business uses.
- It reads all PDFs - no messing around with DRM, no proprietary file formats, no 'cloud' accounts needed
- Combination of features make it a very unique product in the market
On the other side:
- The exorbitant pricing ($800) makes it unsuitable for personal use. There exists better value for money if an E-Ink screen is not a must
- The PDF viewer could do with some more features to make it more versatile / suitable for non-business use-cases. (more zooming, adjustable cropping to remove white margins etc.)
- Firmware, in general, could do with some extra features - such as providing additional options for network shares along with the currently existing WebDAV support.
- Limitations of E-Ink
- Low refresh rate can hamper user experience when redrawing the screen during document navigation / zooming
- Absence of color capabilities
- Adding audio capabilities could help expand the addressable market (targeting audiobooks, for example)
- At the $800 price point, the presence of just 4GB (3GB usable) of internal flash is disappointing. Availability of a microSD slot alleviates this issue somewhat.
- A more powerful processor could help in providing a better user-experience with graphics-heavy PDFs.
- Absence of contrast adjustment (something possible in the Kindle-DX) is a bit disappointing
- There is no built-in light for reading in the dark (something available in the Kindle Paperwhite)
- Wear-out of the pen tips could be a worry for heavy users
- Navigation buttons at the bottom could do with a more pronounced feel. The current design (flush with the rest of the frame) is more suitable for capacitive touch-based implementations.
Despite the list of potential improvements and drawbacks being longer than the positives, the Sony DPT-S1 gets my recommendation for being a unique product in a specific niche. Products based on the 13.3" E-Ink Mobius screen have also been shown at tradeshows by companies like Netronix and Pocketbook, but they remain vaporware.
If the characteristics of E-Ink screens fit your requirements and you need a size-for-size replacement for traditional paper documents, the Sony Digital Paper System DPT-S1 is the perfect fit. It does a surprisingly great job despite being the only such product in the market. We hope Sony continues to provide firmware updates for the product and bring the price down even further.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
109 Comments
View All Comments
Zan Lynx - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
Or knows that you're supposed to set the screen brightness lower than the room. I've never had a problem reading on a phone or a tablet.Tams80 - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link
It's great to see this device exist. If I was still in university, I'd really be lusting after it.It's fantastic to see they are using Wacom EMR. Yes, there are edge accuracy issues with it, but I still think it is the best AD implementation (Wacom Feel is stunted a bit by wacom, but an ereader like this doesn't really need tilt sensitivity).
What I think it could do with though, is more hardware buttons. Some for page turning, and some as programmable hot keys.
I also take it the document notes are kept on each page? It would be good if there was an aggregation feature for notes; that gathers a copy of them all together in a separate file that has no breaks in. A snapshot of context relevant text would also be good.
Ultimately some colour would be ideal, but that's still some way off I take it.
Solandri - Sunday, December 20, 2015 - link
" A4 and US Letter correspond to diagonals of 14.3" and 13.9" respectively. 13.3" with an aspect ratio of 4:3 is ideal for displaying documents typeset in either A4 or US Letter-sized pages."This is a large part of the reason why these devices are overpriced and not successful. By insisting on displaying the entire A4 or Letter-sized page, you're wasting expensive screen real estate displaying blank margins. The device already has a bezel which acts as margins. You don't need to waste screen space showing that empty space. If the page has 2cm or 3/4" margins on all sides, then A4 becomes 12.1" diagonal with a 1.51 aspect ratio, US Letter becomes 11.8" with a 1.36 aspect ratio.
Don't try to display the entire page, blank margins and all. Make the device 12" diagonal with a 1.5 aspect ratio and a white/grey bezel. Include a PDF reader which automatically zooms the page to eliminate margins, intelligently clipping lone outliers like the page number at the bottom of the comic book pic in your review. The device's screen area then decreases from 85 sq inches to 66.5 sq inches, or 78%, with a corresponding drop in weight and price, while giving up little to nothing in the size of displayed pages.
10101010 - Monday, January 18, 2016 - link
Perhaps in the "dead content" world of the Amazon Kindle and other DRM e-readers, a more optimized large format reader without margins could be made. But in the world of more interactive content, i.e. annotating/reviewing PDFs and such, the margins are very useful. Also, having a larger screen size gives the display software more flexibility, i.e. "keep bottom margin" or "keep side margins". For my needs, I wouldn't buy an e-reader like the one you are describing.So I think Sony is on the right track. The tech world still hasn't produced anything as good as paper yet -- 1200 dpi, full size, high quality pixels that don't kill your eyes, etc. It doesn't mean we should stop trying.
Tangey - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
the "better experience" of it's aspect ratio has nothing to do with the e-ink technology. Comparing it with a 4:3 tablet such as an ipad pro instead of the Dell, might have been a better decision.flyguy29 - Monday, December 21, 2015 - link
At $800, there should be nothing held back in terms of on board memory, processing power, and conveniences to make the product uniquely superior to tablets for books, documents and note taking.10101010 - Monday, January 18, 2016 - link
Sony doesn't make the best decisions about how far to push the technology. They are learning, but for many years their policy was to self-cripple their hardware in one way or another.TARRACARTER - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
Helpful piece ! For what it's worth , if people is requiring to merge two PDF files , I merged a service here Altomergexrror - Thursday, February 11, 2016 - link
I'd actually be tempted to invest in one of these... except as you say:"We hope Sony continues to provide firmware updates"
Sony is really bad at letting products rot after the first year. If they don't manage to fix something within that year, they never fix it. And sadly these probably won't be common enough for a hacking community to form, so no modded firmwares to save either.
Which sucks, because this DOES look really nice. Sony's worst enemy always seems to be Sony. *sigh*