Sony PRS-505 Portable Digital e-Reader System (Silver)
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 List Price: $299.99 Sale Price: $375.00 Availability: unspecified 
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Product Description
Includes Sony PRS-505LC Silver Portable Digital E-Book Reader USB Cable Soft Case Software CD-ROM Quick Start Guide.
Details
- displays eBooks purchased from the CONNECT eBook online store
- displays Adobe® PDFs, plus TXT, RTF, BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG and Microsoft® Word files
- plays MP3 and AAC files (protected files not supported)
- internal 192MB memory
- memory slot holds an SD Memory Card (up to 2GB capacity) and Memory Stick® Duo media (up to 8GB capacity)
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Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
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August 5th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Rating
I have been using the PRS-505 for several weeks. EInk rocks! I can read with full sunlight directly on the screen. I have not experienced the eye strain and headaches one gets from endlessly staring at a computer screen.
The layout is logical. I didn’t even bother to read the manual. The reader fits in my back pocket easily for transport. So far I have avoided sitting on it. I read news and books on my reader daily. Perhaps it is just my fascination with new technology but I find myself reading much more than when previously limited to paper.
I am happy with my choice!
Rather that comparing the PRS to the Kindle I will tell you the reasons why I chose the PRS-505 over the Kindle. If you are looking for a comparison of features please try ‘mobileread’. They have an excellent comparison chart and many comments on their forum from readers who own one or the other, or both.
I really liked the fact I can get newspapers on kindle, wirelessly. Also, the number of books available for the Kindle is larger than those available for the PRS, and with Amazon’s commitment the numbers should continue to increase. The price of ebooks on Amazon tends to be lower than Sony Connect. I was leaning hard towards the Kindle. The dictionary and wiki access rock.
What changed my mind?
It turned out to be the PRS community development for the PRS. Using a freeware program called Calibre you can download news from over 50 different web sites and format it for the Sony reader. The Kindle download of the NY Times costs $13/month. With Calibre, it is free. I can also download from the BBC, Science, Spiegel and many other sites. Other programs allow you to change the function of various buttons on the Sony reader. For instance, if you don’t use your ebook reader for listening to mp3s, you may opt to repurpose the volume control button for history or page turns. I was also able to use a dictionary lookup program via the SD card reader. Not as nice as the Kindle, but it works.
All that is needed is to transfer the files to the reader. This requires a USB connection. The Kindle will do all of this wirelessly. It turns out wireless is not as big a deal as it seems at first. The Kindle will only run wirelessly for a day or two. Then it needs to be plugged into a wall to recharge. The PRS-505 recharges from my USB port. While I am transferring the files, it is also recharging the battery. So, I will have to plug into either a power socket with the Kindle, or the USB port on my computer with the Sony. Not as big of an advantage as I thought.
Is there anything you don’t like about the PRS-505?
The cost of ebooks at the Sony Connect store seem to be marginally (and in some cases greatly) higher than Amazon ebooks for the Kindle. The availability of other ebook vendors, (i.e. ebooks, fictionwise, booksonboard), help to lessen the pain. I expect Amazon will continue to increase the ebooks available in their proprietary content. The Sony reader is tied to the PC, (no Macs), but this doesn’t affect me.
Availability of ebook content?
Aside from proprietary content, both Sony and Amazon allow for non-DRM (Digital Rights Management) books to be converted to the native reader format. Other programs are also available for changing a book’s format. Project Gutenberg has about 25,000 free public domain books. Adobe PDF DRM can be read on the Sony, but not the Kindle.
Amazon supports their own proprietary content. Hacks are available, (for those with moderate computer ability), to convert mobipocket DRM books to Kindle’s format. Many of the same hacks allow for converting several other DRM formats to non-DRM which can be converted to a format readable by the Sony or Kindle reader. This allows one to buy a book at the cheapest price, regardless of format. Some computer literacy is required. (Command line anyone?)
Disclaimer: This statement should not be construed as an endorsement of deDRMing books.
What do I recommend?
If you are computer savvy, the products coming from the Sony community will lessen most of the advantages of the Kindle. If you are a news hound who wants to read many various news sources then the Sony will save you a bundle. If you primary read the NY Time bestseller list, you may save money with the Kindle. As far as actually reading an ebook? Pick one, there isn’t much difference between them; in fact, the eink screen on both is exactly the same. I am concerned about the number of Kindle replacement batteries being sold on Amazon. The Sony costs, (as of Feb, 2009), about $100 less than the Kindle. As of now, the Kindle 2.0 is only a rumor. Who knows what the future will bring?
For further information, I strongly recommend checking out the forums at ‘mobileread’ before buying.
August 6th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
Rating
First I have to complain about people complaining who don’t even OWN this item!
I think it is fantastic. It is so light, compact, easy to read (the screen is
the size of a paper back so no squinting necessary as with palm counterparts),
easy to use, and no batteries required! Its re-chargeable and lasts for over
7,000 page turns before needing more charge. This guy/gal dissing this product
hasn’t a clue, pointed out by the fact that they do not even own one. And the
books on sony’s site are cheaper than what you will find at a book store by at
least a couple of bucks not to mention that this ebook reader can handle many different formats, so buy your books where you find the best price.
One complaint, The connect ebooks store/library is in sore need of tech
updating. It takes way longer than it should to do anything and they don’t make
it easy to unload your books back into the library, but they do have a great
selection.
All in all, I give this product 4.99 out of 5. Well worth the money and soooooo
much better than reading off a palm or even an iphone (as i used to do).
August 10th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Rating
Opening
I am going to be moving in the near future. As I was looking at some massive piles of books that were cluttering my room, which would surely cost a lot of money to ship a few thousand miles from Hawaii to Maryland, I thought it might be about time for me to make the jump into eBooks. With that in mind, I went and bought myself this amazing little machine; the Sony Portable Reader System (PRS-505).
Screen
First thing I would like to write about is the screen on this device. The PRS-505 features a 6-inch, 170 ppi resolution, 600×800 pixel, 8-level grayscale E Ink electronic paper screen. Technical jargon aside, this screen looks great.
For those who are not familiar with the E Ink electronic paper technology, basically it is a means of mimicking the appearance of paper on a electronic screen without the use of backlighting; saving battery power. The screen will display one an image of the screen and the image will remain on the screen without using any additional power. If you wanted to, you could display the same image on the screen indefinitely without charging the battery.
Button/Input Layout
I really like the button layout and the layout of various inputs are positioned in a smart way. Flipping through pages is easy. There is are buttons on the right side of the screen or buttons to the bottom left of the device that you can use, depending on how you like to hold the device. min and out is as easy as pushing a single button. Marking bookmarks is that simple s well. Volume buttons, USB, power and headphone inputs (as well as a little slot for a wrist strap) are on bottom of the device, giving easy access to them when you have the include leather book cover on. Power button is on the top of the device along with the SD and Memory Stick Pro Duo slots. The number button on are the side of the decide, which are used for assigning content and jumping to a specific page. Going to page 364 in a book is as simple as hitting `3-6-4-Enter`.
Other Features
Along with the primary feature of reading books, the PRS-505 as a numerous of other features. The Sony Reader does have the ability to display images (JPRG, BMP, GIF and PNG format). Pictures are obviously not displayed in color, but still are very detailed. It also can display text (LRF, PDF, RFT and TXT, as well support for DOC files, which are converted into RFT). It also has the ability to play audio files (AAC and MP3). I have some classical music loaded on my Sony Reader which I like to listen to when I am reading, which works great.
Ease of use
It is a very simple device to use. The eBook Library software makes it very simple to load up books, files, pictures, or audio onto the device. I have it setup right now so each time I plug in my Sony Reader, it will automatically sync any music and book files I have added to my library. You can turn off any setting you wish in that respect. You can tell it to sync all files, some files or no files.
The eBook Store content is easy to navigate and easy to purchase. I have already bought and downloaded a number of books. If you happen to accidentally delete any content from your computer, getting that content again is as simple as logging in and redownloading your purchased content from your Transaction History (no charge of course). You can also have your purchased content on a total of 6 authorized computers or Sony Reader devices.
Closing
I am very happy with my purchase of the Sony Portable Reader. I would highly recommend the purchase of it to anybody who likes to read or anybody who might read more thanks to this convenience.
August 11th, 2010 at 4:27 am
Rating
I got mine over the holiday and I love it. It is small and very easy to read. I read a couple of comments and people complained about backlighting, if you think about it, it is harder on the eyes with one. With this devices I read it and I did not struggle trying to see the pages. It is a little slow when turning pages but that’s because to save battery life, it goes off after a while and you have to wait until the battery comes back on before it turns the page. Nothing major about that to me.
I had no problems downloading the books from the site to my library or to the E-reader. I have not tried to download any PDFs as of yet, but I am sure that it will work easily.
I have even brought a memory card, but I doubt I will need it unless I plan on going out of town for an extended period of time without my laptop or desktop.
I found out that if you buy from other companies, I am a big fan of Extasy & Elloras Cave books, I downloaded them HTML then I had to copy and paste to a word document then save as a RTF file. It worked great. No pictures, but we are not looking for pictures on this. I only want to read.
Overall, I gave this a five star because it is a great product. I looked into a Kindle and thought WTF. I do not want newspapers, I do not want to read blogs off it, so, I do need a device that is a hundred dollars more that I will only be using for book. A Kindle is good for those who need all that other crap but I do not. Think about it, once you have downloaded all your books and it is stolen, what to do then? You have to re-buy your Kindle and probably all the books. I am not sure, just guessing. With the Sony, it is in my library on my computer, which I have backed-up and I do not have to worry about loosing them.
If you are looking for a nice E-Reader that is small and easy to use. The Sony PRS 505 is great.
August 12th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Rating
—————-
Update as of Jun 21, 2009
Only pdf’s that have no formatting can be read on this e-reader.
I downloaded some pdf files (Algorithms in Java, CCNA etc) and except at the smallest magnification, the formatting breaks down at M and L fonts (even M strains the eye; only L is practically readable for pdfs). So I guess I am going to limit reading only fiction and MS word files on this e-reader. I am looking at the Kindle DX for PDF files, but it seems the DX does not let you zoom in. I think that may be a deal-breaker for the DX. I have never been able to read pdfs at exactly 100% magnification. Even on my 20″ LCD monitor, I tend to read at 135%. So until there is a reader the size of DX that allows zooming, it may be better to wait and just use the PC to read pdfs).
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I bought the PRS-505 through an Amazon re-seller about a month ago (blazing fast delivery as usual). Some pros and cons of the reader.
Pros:
This is the item that actually prompted me to write this review today. When I bought the reader I was horribly disappointed with the pdf rendering. The only available magnifications were S and M, and M was still unreadably small. Yesterday when I hooked up the PRS-505 to my PC, it downloaded some firmware updates, including some for pdf rendering. When I re-loaded my pdfs (these are computer books, with code samples in Courier font), the rendering was amazing – like night and day. They have made the font smoother and above all else, the text is much much bigger and completely readable now! Very happy about this (since a lot of text books are now available in pdf format).
1) sleek and just about right to hold and read. Anything thinner would need support. Anything bigger (wider/taller) would make it hard to read holding up with one hand.
2) text appears sharper than LCD. e-ink results in almost no strain to the eye.
3) power button positioned on top, so it doesn’t accidentally trip on. Other buttons are stiff and, again, will not get pushed accidentally.
4) the reader mounts as a drive on XP/Wink2K. Easy to drag and drop encrypted books, and by extension, easy to back up and restore your books if you were to move PCs or change flash cards.
5) sony e-book library is basic and does its job without crashes (had one hang). Again, I like the drag and drop built into it. Buy a book, drag it to the library and/or drag it to the e-reader. Files transfer quickly (std USB 2.0 i/f?).
6) book selection is not great, but then it is not a problem limited to the sony library. I couldn’t find some older popular books on Amazon kindle either (eg: Chaos by James Gleick, none of the books by Ayn Rand or daphne du maurier, very limited Roald Dahl selection, very limited Frederick Forsythe collection etc etc etc). 99% of the books you would ‘typically’ want to read are available on both. I guess more and more books are getting digitized as we speak.
7) pictures are fantastic on the available grayscale. Good if you are reading technical books with illustrations.
9)Page transitions, orientation changes (landscape to portrait) happen fairly fast. Landscape rendering is as good as portrait.
10) metallic construction feels ‘solid’. The leather (pseudo?) cover that ships by default is nice.
Cons:
1) the battery seems to drop even when I had it powered off for a few days. The 3 bar fell to two in 2-3 days. Not sure if this is expected.
2) the page buttons should’ve been bigger. Even though I am right handed, I tend to use the left page buttons as they are bigger.
3) response times are slow when you are moving around the menu. Sometimes you think you did not press a button, press it again, only to find the menu jump ahead. There is a little ‘wait-cursor’ at the bottom, but its not obvious when its ‘working’.
4) not limited to the sony e-reader, e-ink is still not the same as paper. On printed paper, every letter is smooth. On the e-reader, while the font on e-books (MS-WORD is 96% ok, PDF 90% ok – my own arbitrary scaling!) is pretty good, the ones on RSS feeds feels scrappy – you can see some letter-thickening and ‘steps’ (jaggedness) around curves. Another con is that the screen surface, although dull, does reflect light and at times I find myself holding it away at an angle.
Overall strongly recommended.
August 14th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Rating
I own this device. Love it. The screen is perfect. It’s easy to read on. It holds a ton of books and the biggest features is Sony Connects availability of titles. I always find what I am looking for. http://ebooks.connect.com/ I would recommend this device over the $100 more expensive Kindle unless your desire is to read the newspaper on your device. I don’t read the newspaper so I don’t want that one feature. I can easily buy and download books onto my Sony and the prices of the books are very reasonable. I love the product. I am a hardcore reader and that is what this device is made for. Someone who wants to save the wear and tear of reading on a device on their eyes. E-ink is worth the price.
Kindle
6 inch screen
4 level grayscale
10.3 ounces
Sony E-book
6 inch screen
8 level grayscale
9 ounces
Hmmm…..if what you are paying for is the e-ink technology then Sony has Kindle beat with a savings of $100.
August 15th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
Rating
Received this as a gift and it is very, very nice! I won’t go into the specs as others have that covered. I’m somewhat techno-capable, but really not much more than the basics. This reader is quite simple to use. Downloading my free 100 classic books was a breeze (except for all the choices….dawdled over that!).
The screen size may sound small in the specs, but it is a very comfortable size to read. Honestly, would not want a bigger screen as this is a very portable device . . . quickly feels like a paperback in hand. The eInk technology is quite easy on my eyes (unlike LCD backlit screens). As a general rule of thumb, if it is dark enough that you would need some room lighting to read a book, you will need a light to read this device. You can choose from 3 fonts sizes.
Worried that it will not feel like the books you are used to curling up with? So was I, for about 5 minutes, and after that I became lost in the text. The pages are easy to turn, with little delay in the 2nd generation. The bookmark feature is quite handy.
Sure, some readers offer more “bells and whistles” and have email and wireless capabilities. If you need that, great, look around more. I do not. I am an avid reader of books and as a book reader, this device is simply elegant and will not disappoint!
August 16th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Rating
I’m a sixteen-year-old boy (go figur) and this thing is just perfect. It comes with me wherever I go (games, movies, trips) it has become a nessesity for me. I bought one for my birth day six months ago and I, embarassingly enough, left it one the car roof and only noticed until it flew by at fifty mph. It did survive the impact with little more than a bent corner. After this fall though I did by the metal case which I would recomand to anybody. The issue with the backlight is complete BS, people don’t seem to notice that a backlight hurts the eyes which would defeat the purpose of the incredible paper-like quality of this device. One other thing that no one has mentioned is when you bring this out side the sun doesn’t glare off the screen into your eyes like a regular book would so I count that as a plus.
I gave it a five-out-of-five because it does everything I bought it for so why would I complain.
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 am
Rating
I’ve been looking for this thing for years – Sony caught up! In the past several years, I’ve been using PDAs to read ebooks. I’ve literally worn three of them out.
The Sony Reader, unlike the PDAs, is designed for reading books. I have the brown cover on mine, and it’s like holding a book. I’ve turned it face-down to mark my page, forgetting it’s not a paper book!
Some of the things I like:
*Easy on the eye – has been designed to mimic a real page of print. It’s not like reading stuff on a little TV screen any more!
*Lots of books available for download – Sony Connect has tons of books. They are PDF format. You also can read text (.txt) files on it. If you have non-locked ebooks, it is easy to convert html and lit files to txt files and then load them onto your book.
*With txt files, you have a choice of small, medium, and large type.
*It is not backlit, so it has a very long “up” time before it has to be recharged.
*At 2 in the morning, if I run out of books, I can buy one, download it, and be reading in five minutes.
*Ebooks cut down on all those paper books taking up space – especially in small apartments!
*It’s just right – like a book – to hold and read (PDAs were awkward), yet it is lightweight. It’s also quite slender. When shut, it looks like a small leather notebook.
*For the next few months, Sony Connect offers 100 free downloads of classic books. You have to download your 100 books by the cut-off time (February 2008).
Caveats – the pages turn kind of slowly (but you get used to timing the way you hit the turn button, and it is not a big deal); those of you who want to read in bed in the dark so as not to bother a partner – it is not backlit.
At $300, it may seem pricy, but when I think of the three awkward, non really for reading books PDAs I wore out, it seems a lot cheaper.
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*IMPORTANT UPDATE:
******************
I see two major issues in the negative reviews – two issues that I can help you solve with this update.
Issue one: The Sony Library function that interfaces with your Reader gets fussy if you unplug your hardware without the “safely disconnect hardware” ok (look in your tray for the MS Safely Remove Hardware function). This causes a USB issue with your on-computer Library that you interface your Reader with.
Issue two: PDF files (particularly your non-secure PDF books) do not have large enough font sizes to read.
SOLUTION: libprs500, a totally freeware program – totally free, no strings. It works on all systems, it is easy to use, and it provides reformatting features right in the program! Oh – and it does work for 505s.
I’ve been using libprs500 for over a month, and it has none of the USB issues, it does not crash or hang up, it does not tell you “do not disconnect.” AND – it has an edit function that lets you reformat your book – you can ENLARGE the PDF PRINT SIZE. YAY!
I suspect many people think their reader is broken due to the USB issue you may face if you disconnect your Reader without using your “Safely Remove Hardware” program. If you are having this type of issue, or if your Library won’t connect with your Reader, try this little program – once you have your Reader connected and working properly, you can use your libprs500 for storing, uploading books to your Reader, and formatting and just use your Library to buy and download books from Connect.
Yay!
ANOTHER UPDATE!
The software mentioned above has been renamed Calibre. Just search for Calibre and “Kovidgoyal” (the designer) and you will find it. It works like a charm – wanted to be sure you all could locate it, since the name changed.
August 26th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Rating
Books are a mixed bag these days: On the one hand you have modern books, which are often set in slightly anemic typefaces that get overpowered by the overly white, slightly glossy paper they are printed on. Typography is often quite bad, looking little better than a Word document. And those few books that purport to be well-designed are often self-consciously so, as if to say: “Look here’s a book that isn’t as ugly as all the rest. And it has ITC Bodoni as a text face. How cool is that?” The idea that books should be beautiful _and_ readable seems to have fallen out of fashion.
Then there are older books, and you only have to go a library to find that many volumes from no longer than forty or fifty years ago were set with a sense of style and elegance that puts most newer works to shame. And when you look at 19th century hand-set books, the choice of paper, color of the binding, the letter and line spacing, and the typefaces, are often exquisite. Unfortunately, the pages are stained and yellowed, and the book is musty, so while it pleases your eyes, it offends your nose.
This is where electronic readers come in. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, Google Books and other such projects, millions of older, out-of-copyright works have been digitized and can now be enjoyed without the downsides of an old printed volume (or a new pricey one). Somehow, our computers are awash with texts, be they long e-mails, web pages, electronic books, or other such material, but the normal computer screens are not very suited for extended reading on them (making you bleary-eyed after a while). All you need then is a device that you can quickly copy your texts to and read them on. And the Sony Reader accomplishes this wonderfully.
Now, Amazon has a very similar reading device out, the Kindle: Amazon’s Wireless Reading Device. This may be more useful if you want to read the latest trash from the NYT bestseller list, but let’s face it — the golden century of the novel was the 19th. Most of the novels written today are “not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force” (to quote Dorothy Parker). The 20 or so samples from current books that come with the Sony Reader (and that I deleted immediately after laughing out loud about how indescribably vile they were) illustrate this point perfectly. I have no idea why anyone would want to waste his time and money on those titles after reading the excerpts.
Getting free content on the Sony Reader is far easier than onto the Kindle: The Reader can deal natively with text (TXT) and PDF files (for most PDF files you can even adjust the font size on the Reader, and if that’s not enough landscape mode is usually helpful) as well as Rich-Text-Format (TextEdit on the Mac can create that). If you download a PDF from Google Books, you first need to convert it to a less highly-compressed PDF — if you have a Mac you are in luck, just open it in Preview and do “Save As…” The resulting file might be 10 or 20 times larger than what you get from Google but it works fine on the Reader. The Sony Readers also have a native document format, LRF, with advanced capabilities like a clickable table of contents. Sites such as[...] offer Project Gutenberg titles in LRF format among others.
It also helps that the Reader is not as ugly as the Kindle. After all, what is a well-written book with nice typesetting worth if you have to read it on an eyesore like the Kindle?
So in my view the Sony Reader is perfect: it works with a Mac, the display is very readable even in direct sunlight (where a normal book page is much too bright), copying content over is no more difficult than copying data onto a memory stick, the device feels light yet solid in the hand, the display size is ideal for novels, and there is even an MP3 player and picture viewer. True, the Kindle has wireless connectivity, but isn’t the constant possibility of being distracted by the Web in the way of enjoying a good book anyway? Therefore, the Sony Reader has my vote.
Perhaps the one extra you should buy is the wall charger, because that isn’t included in the package anymore. The Reader’s 200 MB of memory can hold hundreds of books (if they are stored as text and not scans), so I think it makes a lot of sense to be independent of the computer for recharging. Also, you might want to purchase a reading light — but skip Sony’s light wedge, which is not only very overpriced but supposedly can also scratch the display. If you frequently need extra light, the Sony PRS-700BC Reader Digital Book might be a better choice for you. Finally, the “on/off switch” at the top (which really just blanks the display and locks the other keys) is a bit flimsy, so only use this switch if you put the Reader in a bag or somewhere else where its navigation keys can be pressed accidentally. Remember, the device only needs power for _changing_ pages, so if you just want to put it onto the night stand, leave it on!