Review: Neat package, but I love my paperback

And on this single unit, you can have lots and lots of books ready to read. Now bookish folk can go away for weeks with just hand luggage on Ryanair.

The other winning feature is that with a single button, you can enlarge the type size.

As its commands are easy to use, it is - oddly enough for a piece of new technology - very oldie-friendly. People who have begun to find small type trying no longer need to seek out grotty large-print books.

The design is appealingly restrained. And it's nice the way it mimics pages to be turned, rather than having continuous scrolling text. Indeed it's slower to turn a page on this than with a real book - it's cleverly been aimed at leisurely readers, not impatient whizzkids.

It's not backlit, so to read the screen you need ambient light, just as with a book - and the theory is that even in bright sun, there's no glare. That's not entirely true. Inevitably, the screen does catch a reflection from time to time.

The greatest disappointment with the appearance is that it's so grey. The page is not white at all but more the colour-tone of a Royal Navy battleship. It doesn't make the type harder to read but it isn't anything like paper.

A book is in the end words alone and it's salutary to be reminded of that. But most book-lovers become enormously attached to the actual copies they have read, whether they are fine editions or ragged but still evocative paperbacks.

For now, the Sony Reader will probably appeal most not to book-lovers but gadget-buyers. It is the literary iPod, for those who would like everything to be an iPod. For myself, I still think paperbacks are a better deal. You never have to plug them in and you don't burst into tears if you drop them in the bath.