But there’s a hidden side to these eBook readers. They’re often used to consume dense, technical or academic material, usually in PDF format, and these documents are often awkward, containing diagrams, figures organised in tabular form and text organized in columns.

In the US the Amazon Kindle DX covers this sort of scenario perfectly, but over here you’re stuck with the smaller devices, so it’s critical that zoom features, text reflow and panning are easy to use. We’ve already noted in our full length review that the Sony Reader Touch PRS-650 does all this well, and better than the Amazon Kindle at that, but at the request of a handful of readers (human ones), here’s a more in-depth analysis and comparison.

Load a PDF document on each, click the zoom button and this is what you see. In the top image the  Kindle offers a range of zoom levels but no typeface enlargement. Below it, the Sony Reader Touch provides three methods of manipulating your document: typeface enlargement options run along the bottom (XS, S, M,L, XL and XXL), a Zoom In button offers standard page zoom and pan, and to the right, Page Mode offers various ways of slicing and navigating a PDF page.

This shows the result of the Kindle’s first step of zoom – there’s clearly not enough granularity in the adjustment because there’s no setting that allows you to fit the text to the width of the screen. The result? You have to pan right to finish each sentence. It’s inflexible, awkward, and rules out the Kindle for the consumption of complicated PDF files.

The Sony, on the other hand, gives you a number of choices to suit a number of different scenarios. Above, we’ve enlarged the typeface one step. You can see the text now stretches the full width of the screen, and although the original formatting is lost, there are no awkward line breaks or spacing problems. It’s much more readable.

If you want to retain the formatting, simply tap the Zoom In button. A slider on the left-hand side of the screen lets you finely tune the zoom level. The Lock button at the top re-enables turn control while retaining the same zoom level, while other shortcuts offer simple fit-to-width and fit-to-height operations. If the text is still unreadable with the text stretched to the edge of the screen, the touchscreen provides a quick and simple way to pan around at closer zoom levels. Just hold your finger to the screen and drag.

That’s not all, however. The Sony also offers a number of shortcuts to make the reading and navigation of complex texts simpler. The page mode button offers five quick options, the most useful of which splits the page into four or six sub-pages to make reading column-based pages easier.

Choose the 2-Column Split and, as you swipe your finger across the screen left to right, instead of moving you to the next page the view moves from the top left position down in stages until the bottom of the page is reached, then up to the top right and down again until the bottom of the page is reached once more.

So there you have it. The Sony is a clear winner in this comparison, proving that the Kindle, though brilliant in most ways, certainly isn’t flawless.

This was the first comment I heard this morning when I returned to the office after visiting the British Library to play with Sony’s new Reader Touch. As an eBook advocate, I’ve been hearing this refrain ever since the original Sony PRS 505 dropped on my desk last year. People who like to read adore paperbacks. They’re cheap, perfect at what they do and are pleasingly tactile. We like how they feel, the way they smell; we like to run our hands over them in a book shop.

eBook readers have failed to convince because books don’t need upgrading. It’s brilliant that an eBook reader can hold 350 books, but the majority of people don’t carry around 350 books. The majority of people won’t read 350 books in their lifetime. If eBook readers are going to break out of their niche and really scar the public psyche they need to start offering useful features their paper brethren don’t. And with the curtain raised, let me usher the Sony Reader Touch to centre stage.

The Reader Touch features a 6in 800 x 600 touchscreen which allows you to add research notes and highlight chunks of text either with a finger or the supplied stylus. Stuck on a troubling word? Double tap it and a definition will appear at the bottom of the screen courtesy of the inbuilt Oxford English dictionary. Double tap the definition and you’ll be taken to that page in the dictionary allowing you to look up synonyms, usage or etymology. Of course, this is just a feature list, but what makes the Reader Touch special is how well it all works.

As you makes notes and highlight text, they’re indexed on a separate notes screen, with a single tap taking you back to the original page – removing the need to flip through the entire book. Pages spring into view, rather than doddering onto the screen – which has been the most common complaint associated with eBook readers. And that screen, gracious. As with the Kindle 2 it renders in 16 shades of grey, which gives text a pleasing crispness without it ever feeling like your eyes are doing laps on a sandpaper treadmill.

However, the thing that really impressed me was the build quality. If you want an eBook reader, your wallet is going to be at least £180 lighter (£250 for the Reader Touch) when you’re done. Needless to say, if I’m going to hand over that amount of cash, the device in my hand should be so lovely, so well built, so utterly desirable that I could get married and be three years into the relationship before my wife bothered to look at my face. Unfortunately, most eBook readers feel cheaper than Jordan’s relationship advice.

If I had the Reader Touch in my hand, my wife wouldn’t bother looking at my face until my funeral. There’s no creaking, no cheap plastic, or tacky rubber. The aluminium case is beautifully designed and reassuringly solid. The other thing that could be worth looking out for is Sony’s plan to tie up with libraries to offer eBook rentals. Details are sketchy beyond the basic plan, which will see books licensed to the reader for between 14 and 29 days. After that, they’ll automatically expire, meaning they don’t have to be taken back. The scheme’s already being trialled in the US, with a UK version expected “sometime within the next year”.

All in all then, my hopes are high for this, and I should be able to deliver a definitive review in the next few weeks.