Sony Digital Paper DPT-CP1 Review

Sony's 10-inch e-reader, the Digital Paper DPT-CP1 ($599), is a delightful but very specialized tool for a niche audience.

If you're a doctor, lawyer, or scientist who deals with thick sheafs of PDF files, the CP1 is terrific: It's the lightest way to carry, read, and annotate long PDFs.

But as with the 13.3-inch model we reviewed a year ago, its high price and poor software prevent it from competing with more mainstream e-readers, or even with Onyx's similarly high-priced but more flexible Boox line.

The Hardware Is Lovely

The CP1's frame is pure simplicity.

A feather-light 8.5 ounces, it really feels like a pad of paper.

The textured, slightly slanted back is easy to grip.

It has one single physical button on the front, which is a menu button; a power button on the bottom; and a reasonable black bezel around its 1,872-by-1,404 E Ink Carta screen.

The included stylus clips into a magnetic socket on the side.

The only thing missing, really, is a backlight, but that would make for a thicker build.

The 10.3-inch size turns out to be ideal for legal briefs, court records, textbooks, scientific journals, and manga.

It's a bit small for sheet music, especially if at arm's length.

It's overkill for reading actual books, which work better in a handheld size.

The tablet has about 11GB of free storage.

There is no way to add storage, and no support for cloud services.

Battery life depends on page turns; I got a week on a charge while testing it.

The Software Isn't

Sony made some significant improvements to its software since last year, but it's still pretty bad.

The most important limit here is that the DPT-CP1 can only read PDFs.

It can't read any other format, and it can't read Adobe Digital Editions DRM content, although you can password-protect your own documents.

That means most mainstream ebooks, including library loans, are out.

The tablet has no web browser or store; you transfer your PDFs from a PC or phone.

The on-device UI is basically just a file manager.

The PC software required me to turn off my antivirus to install it, and is a barebones window of drag-and-drop folders.

It's like mass storage mode, if mass storage mode was awkward proprietary software with its own drivers and not something built into every copy of Windows.

Sony now has a smartphone app to transfer files to and from the Digital Paper, but its interface is poor and it only half works.

To get it to pair with my phone, I had to first set up the DP's Wi-Fi using a PC and a USB cable, including manually entering the name for a Wi-Fi network that mysteriously didn't appear on the tablet's list.

Then you can use the app to transfer files from the DP to your phone...but to transfer files from your phone to the DP, you can't browse in the app, but have to use a share sheet from a file manager or PDF reader you've separately downloaded.

This is all par for the course, basically.

You can get the job done, but in roundabout, awkward ways that show little thought for UX design.

Take Note

Once your PDFs are on your reader, though, they look great.

You can jump to a page number, look for an annotation, or search within a document for text.

Remember, this is PDF, so you can't reformat the documents or change fonts.

You can zoom, but only one page at a time.

This is for reading 8.5-by-11 pages in their native size and format.

The included pen, which clips into a magnetized slot on the side of the tablet, lets you annotate PDFs in red or blue.

Both colors appear as gray on the screen, but they come through as color when you transfer the file back to a PC or smartphone.

You can also open up "side note" pages, which show a main document on the left and a blank area for notes on the right, or just take free pages of notes with the pen.

In side note mode, journal text is just barely large enough to read with sharp eyes.

The pen is great for taking notes.

It's responsive, with almost no lag, a step up from the 13-inch DPT-RP1.

The matte surface of the tablet has excellent grip and really makes you feel like you're writing on paper.

A button on the pen switches it into eraser mode.

But it's also important to understand the limits: This is only for note-taking.

The pen doesn't have pressure or tilt sensitivity, so it's not an art stylus.

You can underline or circle things, but you can't highlight them for some reason—drawing over a piece of text covers it over.

The other downside of the pen is that it needs separate charging every few days, and it's easy to forget to charge it.

File loading and page turn times are dependent on the content.

Text-heavy PDFs, such as medical journal entries, move quickly.

PDFs mostly transformed from graphics, such as manga pages, flip noticeably slowly.

Text is as sharp as on any other 300ppi E Ink Carta e-reader.

Comparisons and Conclusions

There's a small but real competitive market of 10-inch E Ink devices with pens: this one, the Onyx Boox Note ($549), and the ReMarkable ($599).

Sony's advantage is that it's by far the lightest of the three: 8.5 ounces as opposed to the Note's 11.5 ounces and the Remarkable's 12.3 ounces.

Sony's limited software locks you into a very specific use case: This is for people who need to read and mark up large volumes of PDF documents.

I've recently been reading a lot of technical documents on the health effects of millimeter wave radiation, and for dealing with a stack of those pages, it's great.

But you have to be aware that's all it can do.

Onyx's approach is much more flexible.

Because the Boox Note supports Android, it can read a much wider range of file types and even run third-party e-reading applications.

We haven't reviewed it yet, so I can't say whether it's a superior device.

But I did give our Editors' Choice to Onyx's 13.3-inch Boox Max2 for the same reason of flexibility.

Considering how much I'm dunking on Sony's software, my 3.5-star rating here might seem a little high.

But the DPT-CP1 is a pleasure to use as long as you stay in its narrow lane of reading and marking up PDF documents.

That's a niche market to be sure, but a real one.

And with better software and a $100 lower price than the 13.3-inch model, it's clearly the better buy if you don't need the extra-large size for documents like sheet music.