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Reading manga and comics on the sony reader. The definitive review.

Introduction

I’ve bought the reader for three reasons.

1. I want to examine this new technology so I can prepare to develop or design for it.
2. I want to take something to read with me when I’m travelling. This should be lowweight, low energyconsumption and easy to read.
3. But the most important of all (and here comes the connection to our website) I have gigabytes worth of manga scanlations that I never had time to read.

I want to take these mangascanlations with me on a portable reader and read them whenever I have the time.
Granted, I have one of the lightest (and coolest) laptop available on the market, the Samsung Q30, but even with a weight of 1kg, it’s not handy to take it with me on the road. Besides, the energy consumption of the laptop is high. It won’t last a full longhaul flight.
A PDA has the same problems (and the screen is too small), the Sony reader would be perfect.

When I did my initial investigation on the Sony Reader’s manga-capabilities, I didn’t find a finite review. Granted, the examples I’ve seen had pushed me over the edge. But I was still in doubt, that’s why, for my fellow mangareaders, here’s a definitive review on the manga/comic-capabilities of the Sony Reader PRS500

Navigational troubles

I’d bought the Sony Reader and tested it out. Off-the-shelf, it isn’t quite suitable for reading manga or comics. Don’t worry yet, the reader support image files, but putting thousands of image-files in the reader will be a pain to navigate, because the reader does not support folder/directories-collections. You have to throw them all in one folder.

Also, pages that are not in the common resolution (about 800×600) will be resized. This resizing causes the page to be fuzzy to read.

So in order to enhance your reading experience, you need to convert your collection to the Sony Reader’s format.

Luckily, I also had the #1 goal in mind, developping for the reader. I wrote a program which can convert my collections of manga into PDF-files. Although I can use the PDF directly in the reader, I still run the PDF through a rasterfarian, this makes the manga even more readable and easy to navigate. I’ll write a tutorial for this in a next article.

The quality of sequential art on the reader. Sequential arts?

Before I venture upon the quality of sequential arts on the Sony Reader PRS500, I have to write a short introduction on the common formats.

There are three types of sequential arts I read.

1. On top, Manga, usually in greyscale and relatively large fonts, paperback format.
2. But also (usually American) comics like Spider-man which are in colour and a lot of text in small fonts, around paperback format. But I must not forget comic strips from newspapers like Garfield, which can be colorized and grayscaled, with large fonts if it had any text at all.
3. Besides these, a format very common in Europe, comics books and albums: A4-formats in high quality colour which include titles like Asterix.

I’ll write a review on all three of them.

American Comics on EINK with the Sony Reader PRS500

To see if the reader is suitable for american comics, I’ve made these pictures. They’re from the popular comic Ultimate Spider-Man, which is in full colour. They’re converted to grayscale for the reader.

The first two images shows the problem with american comics. American comics tend to rely a lot on it’s colours. Because the images will become grayscaled, which makes it looks like everything is happening in the “dark”, that already spoils a major part of the reading experience.

Next are the fontsize. American comics tend to squeeze a lot of text into the bubbles compared to manga. (because american comics are bound to a set amount of pages, and too many “frames” will make it even more expensive). These text becomes very small on the reader.

And finally… there are a lot of “double pages”, “foldopen” art or storytelling goin on. If this is done on the reader, the text becomes even smaller. Still readable, if you concentrate enough and have good eyesight.

With this test, I’ve given up on american comics on the current EINK-technology. I’d have to wait for the future A4 sized, colour eink.

Before we leave the american market, let’s take a look at comic strips.

Comic strip with their large text bubbles, simple colouring (if any) and large artwork are very suitable for the reader.

Comic Books on EINK with the Sony Reader PRS500

Another sequential art, the A4 sized comic books.

The same problems occurs as with American Comics. Colours being grayscaled, small text.. It spoils the fun.

Manga on Eink

Finally, the part we’re all waiting for: reading Manga on the sony reader.

Wikipedia explains that Manga is usually printed on lowquality recycled paper (newspaper like) first and then bundled in different forms of binds. As the Sony Reader PRS500 uses the EINK-screen with 166DPI, the quality should be comparable to the initial printing of Manga on the lowquality paper.

Unfortunately, I don’t have these kind of printings. As a Manga-fan, I of course have the higher quality bindings, a volume worth of manga in bookform. I’ll compare the reader to that.

Manga is usually in grayscale and has large fonts makes it very suitable for the grayscale screen of the reader. The fact that the reader’s size is comparable to the average manga-book leaves one thinking too… (the predecessor of the Reader, the Librie was rumoured to be designed for reading manga)

I’ve taken a couple sample pics. The pictures were made inhouse with natural daylight (on a rainy sunday afternoon) and autofocus. (PS. don’t fret with the battery indicator. I’ve been harrassing my reader by testing several things. The CPU usage was high)

First test: Readability.

These two pictures show the readability of some standard scanlations converted for the Sony Reader with my method. I’ve tried to find a page with smallest fontsizes and a lot of details. Click on the image to read the discription.

I don’t know about you, but to me the readability is very good. (Not a suprising conclusion, since I’ve read thousands of pages on the reader already)

Of course, the readability is high, because I’ve converted the files with my conversion method which ensures highest readability and contrast. Here are a couple of examples from unprocessed images.

These is an image some member sent to me to test. These is a simple jpg that I dropped into a SD-card and let the Sony Reader opens it.

Their original:

As you can see, an unprocessed image can be quite readable. But the quality is not as good as the processed ones. The text is too light and doesn’t have enough contrast.

Manga you can purchase

I’ve compared my own converted manga through the manga you can buy from the Sony Connectstore, my versions are much clearer and more readable. That is because the versions you can buy at Tokyopop (through the sony connect software) has a higher resolution. Resizing this resolution, the reader will make it fuzzy…

Here’s an example:

To be honest. I’m really disappointed with the purchased manga. Not only does the store not offer famous titles of manga by true Japanese artists, the quality of the images are less than favourable. It’s obvious that they made the ebook version so that it can be read on the computer through the Connect Software too, but that means that the Sony Reader has to resize it, which means….

Also, due to this higher resolution, that book with about 200 pages takes is about 50MB in size. A converted scanlation of that size would be 10-15MB only. I’d stick to converting scanlations, thank you.

Page changing speed

Here’s a video to show the page changing speed. Time from the moment the page turns from 2-3:

The final truth: The Sony Reader VS The Real Book

How does the reader’s quality compares to the real deal? Let these images answer that.

These pictures are taken with EXACT the same conditions. The lighting is natural daylight (on a rainy day) through the window. The placement of the book and the reader are the same. And the distant from the camera to the book/reader is the same, with the same zoom.

This is the best comparison I can make. It even shows the size difference between the reader and the book.

If you compare the reader to the printed (high Q) book, the resolution and details is of course nowhere near as good. If you open up the bigger version you can actually tell that certain details are almost non-existant. Like in the second picture, the shadows of the seats and the dithering of the floor is unrecognizable. As well as the sweatdrops in the first pictures.

Conclusion

You can draw your own conclusion on these if you want, but if you ask me, I think the Sony Reader does a great job. At least there are certain things that haunts the real book… That volume you see right now is one my favourite volume. I think I’ve read it at least 10 times. It’s also a couple of years old, which is why the pages are turning yellow already(it was pure white in the beginning). And also, it started to fall apart. That’s whyI used that volume for this review, I didn’t have to bend another manga to make such a picture.

The digital format won’t have these problems. And when there’s another high-resolution version of the E-ink technology is out, i’d just convert the original digital version to that new screen and maybe, maybe it will better than the real book. For now, I’m happy that I can take my three cabinets full of Manga (and more) with me on a 250gram device which fits in my jacket’s inner pocket.