Electronic books have been talked about for years, but it's only recently that manufacturers have come up with technology that can come close to matching the feel and comfort of a real printed book.

The Sony Reader PRS-505, sold through Waterstone's, is the first electronic book to have a real chance of becoming a British bestseller.

As you'd expect from Sony, the Reader is good-looking. It's the size of a paperback, with a discreet fake-leather cover. It comes with 100 classic books on a CD, which were simple to load onto it.

More books can be downloaded from the web – out-of-copyright titles are available freely online, although they're not as nicely formatted as the paid-for downloaded books. Waterstone's has a large selection of these at near real-book prices, but it's necessary to load another (included) piece of software to view them.

But what makes the Sony Reader really useful is the E-Ink screen, which presents black text that can easily be read in direct sunlight. Using it, we soon forgot we were reading on a screen, especially when the Reader was set to the middle of its three text sizes.

The screen simulates real printed text quite well, and there's no backlight. That does mean you need to be in sunlight or a lit room, as with a printed book, but it also means very little eye strain, often caused by lit screens. It uses no power when the page isn't being turned, giving it an excellent battery life (see below).

The problem with E-Ink is that it takes a fairly long time for the image to update, which means that turning a page takes longer than it does with a real book. Partly because of this, the interface feels awkward. You have to navigate menus using a row of buttons, and some menus are in the wrong order: authors are listed by first name, for instance.

The Reader's memory can hold 160 books, with an SD memory card slot for expansion, and the battery lasts for 6,800 page-turns. That's enough to make it a real boon for travellers, especially as it can also display text and PDF files.

But if you can wait for a more sophisticated model – perhaps with cheaper books – it would be wise to hold out.