Everything's small and in low-res grayscale, and scrolling is a mess of stuttering, flickering and image ghosting.

ENGADGET: Sony Reader PRS-T2 review: same old e-reader, new and (mostly) improved design

You load your image of choice into the app, which will then remove all color from it, giving you a grayscale photo canvas.

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The images option, meanwhile, is a great way to view some of your favorite pictures in 16 glorious levels of grayscale.

ENGADGET: Sony Reader PRS-T2 review: same old e-reader, new and (mostly) improved design

That lets you read the text in attachments like Word and Acrobat files and see pictures in grayscale, like a BlackBerry on steroids.

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Grayscale has gone from 4 shades to 8.

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The sound quality is good, and the biggest advantage it has over most everything else out there is the sheer quality of the its display, which is not only a higher resolution than that of the iPod (220x176 pixel vs. 138x110 pixels), but its full 262, 000 colors iPod's easily outclasses the iPod's grayscale LCD.

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It took so long for electronic ink screens to finally hit the market we feel a bit silly getting impatient for the next-generation, but the Kindle has been on the market for a year and a half now, Sony Reader models for twice that long, and still we're dealing with the same crummy 7:1 contrast ratio, 16 shade grayscale, and .74 second refresh rate.

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