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Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader | 
 enlarge | Brand: Sony
Category: CE
Buy New: $269.99 (On sale from $299.99)
You Save: $30.00 (10%)
New (8) from $269.99
Rating:  69 reviews
Media: Electronics
Operating System: Windows XP Professional Edition
System Memory: 0
Memory Type: SDRAM
Native Resolution: 6"
Modem: None
Display Size: 6
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 0.3 x 4.8 x 6.9
Warranty: 1 year warranty
MPN: PRS-505/LC
Model: PRS-505/LC
UPC: 027242723658
EAN: 0027242723658
ASIN: B000WP2RC2
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Easy to read display - e-paper display with quicker page turns | | • | Premium design - Simple, yet sophisticated with easier navigation | | • | Compact and lightweight | | • | Integrated eBookstore with 20K titles | | • | Up to 7,500 page turns on full charge |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The Reader Digital Book holds about 160 eBooks or hundreds more with optional removable memory cards. Its portable size makes it the perfect travel companion, allowing you to read a variety of books whenever and wherever you want. With thousands of eBook titles available from the CONNECT eBooks Store, you can choose to download new releases, classics and popular book titles as well as view other document formats such as Adobe PDF10, RTF, TXT, BBeB and Microsoft Word. Its long battery life lasts up to 7,500 continuous page turns, and the amazing paper-like screen technology is easy on the eyes.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Best e reader on the market October 11, 2007
Arthur Camiel Kesteloot Jr. (West Bloomfield, MI United States)
62 out of 70 found this review helpful
I just received my ereader and am very impressed with it's compact size, long battery life, and the extensive number of books that are available for download. I both travel and read a great deal. This will be easy to travel with, and reduce the the need for shelf space for traditional books in my home.
Sony is building an e-reader site for Borders books in early 08. I have no idea when it will officially launch.
This is highly recommended.
Stil long way to go but it's best eBook reader on the market November 22, 2007
LKR (Israel)
77 out of 80 found this review helpful
Reviewing this device is a bit hard - why is that ?
Because it is the best eBook reader on the market currently BUT it has problems , but again on the other hand it has less problems than any other device :)
So let's begin :
First you need to know about it is that it's NOT LCD screen. Why this important ? - Two reasons:
a) I and many people can't read from LCD , the back lighting gives me a headache and my eyes get tired after several minutes , with this device I can read as any paper book. It has just white (well actually bit gray) screen and text looks black on it.
b) The battery holds much longer, and I mean really longer, with regular PDA or cell phone it runs out after 3-5 hours (depending on device and battery) but here it can sustain the device for month. How this happens ? - well this eInk technology does not require power to keep image on screen, just to draw it so battery get used mostly only when you turn the page and believe me you can finish several books with one charge.
I previously owned earlier version of this device called PRS-500 in this version they had fixed several issues I had with previous one.
- They made it appear as "Mass storage device" when connecting to computer so you can just drug-and-drop files there.
- They moved page turn buttons to the right side of the device so now you can hold it with both hands and pressing the buttons right hand is more intuitive.
- They moved the menu selection buttons from bellow the screen to the right so they match software menu positions - a much welcome change also since the right hand is closer to them and it's more intuitive, like in some ATM machines :) Also "Size" button (controlling the text size) moved to more convenient location.
- The bad thing is that dropped the charger from the set, you can still buy it separately but its a downgrade. Anyway , option to charge it from USB is still there :)
- The device use 2nd generation of eInk technology called Visuplex, with it screen looks much whiter , texts looks more vivid, updated much faster and it does not suffer from the "artifact" leftovers problem PRS-500 had (actually it only sound serious, they were visible only if you look for them)
The device is light, easy to handle and convenient to use.
It's a book reader, so what types of books can you read on it ?
1. You can read Sony's own .rlf and .rlx format files (books) bought at SonyConnect store.
2. You can read TXT files.
3. You can read PDF files (here there is a small problem since most PDFs are created in A4/Letter page size and displaying them on 6" device even in highest magnification looks too small, but you can hold "size" button for several seconds and it will rotate the screen 90 - now everything fits and looks nicely but amount of text on page of course reduced). Also turning page on PDF a bit slow.
4. You can read RTF and DOC files (DOC files actually only loaded thru Sony's software that convert then in a second to RTF)
Personally I use program called "BookDesigner 5.0" to convert everything I want to read into Sony's .RLF format and there are a lot of other converters. SonnyConnect is not the place with best book prices, at least not yet , may be now with some competition from Amazon's Kindle they might reduce prices. Also there are a lot of free stuff on the internet.
Now what the most impotent things about book reader ? - Well book reading experience :)
The device provide a very good one, the 6" screen for me when I first read about sounded too small but after actually using it it's a good size, ideal for traveling but at home (to replace paper books totally) I would prefer to have something like 8-9" , but again it's a minimum to feel comfortable even at home.
As for a negative sides one can mention that when you turn page it kind of "flashes" inverting it content, probably it's a technology thing , that' the way eInk screen clears itself and you do not notice it when reading but if you not reading but reviewing device :) you might notice it.
Also the page turning could be faster, its not too slow but it touches "bare minimum" of the time one need to read comfortably, especially this true for PDFs.
Device also can show gray images and play MP3 and AAC music (in music case running your battery out pretty fast , I guess no eInk for sound :)
There are two versions of the device - silver and "dark blue" (it's so dark that hard to notice it's blue and not black :) ) Personally I recommend to get the blue one - text looks much clearer in dark surrounding.
The cover also rather good, you feel that it actually protects the device and it feels good in hands.
Also if you are not English user there are firmware modifications to make this device show your languages. It's not thanks to Sony but to community of users (they added a lot of modifications also like clock, different icons, navigating pages with joystick etc) but at least this option exists.
Bottom line:
Adding the wireless, increasing speed a bit, supporting full unicode languages range and cutting price by 1/2 :) would make this device ideal.
Also it would be nice to have it in 8-9" flavor.
May be having it with touch screen would be nice as well, but sure not with ugly keyboard as on Kindle.
But anyway on my opinion it's the best device for reading eBooks, for example Amazon's Kindle looks ugly with all this buttons,weights more support only rather rare formats and huge page turn buttons that should make it easier to use easily pressed by accident (there is more but we not reviewing Kindle here :))
Quite nice, and a good promotion for 2008 March 25, 2008
belacane (Sammamish, WA USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I just received my Reader this morning and immediately went to the CONNECT ebook website to start loading it with books. Anyone who registers their Reader before 9.30.08 gets 100 free classics! Since I had a list of about 45 classics I was going to download, this was a great bargain for me. I have spent the last hour or so reading the Sony Classics copy of "The Three Musketeers."
The device is slim and user-friendly. I was a bit irritated that the page-changing button is on the bottom left (intuitively I felt it should have been on the bottom right), but then DH pointed out that I could use the buttons on the side (left and right arrow keys about halfway up the right side of the device) to change pages, and that's much better. The e-ink screen is better than I'd expected. In our office with the blinds closed I can still read perfectly well.
The CONNECT website hung a few times (notably when I was searching on an author who turned out to not have any books in the store), but a quick ctrl+alt+delete took care of that. Everything is fine now.
I also tested the addition of .txt files by downloading "The Vicomte de Bragelonne" from Project Gutenberg and it's fine (although PG is loaded up with all that legalese text at the beginning).
The Sony versions of the classics have a few minor typos but for free, who cares? They tend to be typos such as a word having a space in the middle ("D'Artagnan disap peared through the doorway").
All in all, I'm very pleased that I'll be able to carry so many books on such a small device.
[..]
The REAL Truth about PDF files on SONY Reader... April 21, 2008
Jim Francis (Miami/London/Negril)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Sony Reader handles PDF's blindingly fast if the PDF includes a proper table of contents. If the PDF is created without a table of contents then of course the result will be much less efficient than it could be on this or any other reader.
HERE's THE PROOF...
I took a dense 1500 page book and formatted it with MS Word to suit the Sony Reader (with a bigger font) creating 8,000 smaller PDF pages optimized for the Sony Reader.
Then I used Adobe Acrobat Professional to create the PDF, instructing it to process ALL tags (default is NO tag processing). The PDF creation process took 1 - 2 hours but the result was incredible.
THE RESULT...
Using the Sony Reader I can now find or reference any part of this HUGE text FASTER than using an actual printed version of the text.
It's beautiful and it works great!
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!
Expensive, but a good idea January 22, 2008
D. Gorder (Minnesota, USA)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
I bought the sony prs-505 digital reader because I like to travel and I like to read. I have taken some longer trips and had to find something to read because I couldn't carry along enough books, and in some places it is difficult to find books in English. So I thought the digital reader would be a good idea for me. It costs more than I wanted to pay, but I finally talked myself into it.
Point one, a good point in my opinion: One thing that some readers found annoying but I think is good is the fact that the screen is not backlit. I have tried reading from my PDA and from my laptop and the backlighting irritates my eyes after a while. I work on a computer all day long and my eyes don't seem to suffer, but I have other things to look at besides my computer screen, whereas if I am reading a book I concentrate wholly on the screen for quite a long period of time. The sony reader is not backlit so it is more like a real book. If it is dark you will need a light if you want to read. In my opinion, the contrast between the page and the letters on the page is almost as good as a book. Not quite, but almost.
Point two, mostly a good point: the reader is about the size of a paperback so it fits easily into almost any sort of carrying bag or jacket pocket and, although heavier than a paperback it is much lighter than a hard cover book. The bad thing about this is the size of the screen. I would like it a little bigger but that might make the reader a little too big.
Point three, some good some adequate: there are free electronic books available on the internet. Three sources that I know of right off hand are sony's free books that come with the reader, Baen books www.baen.com, and Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org. The books that come with the reader are all classics, many are very good classics, but nothing modern. These books are usually top quality and seem to be made for the sony reader. Project Gutenberg books are all out of copyright. There are lots of them and it will take a long time to see what is available. Baen Publishing offers their authors a chance to offer a free electronic version of their books, but the down side is that some of the free books are part of a series and you might have to purchase other books from the series. The bad part of the free books is that, other than the sony classics, the books are not formatted for the sony reader. The Baen books are pretty good, but the Project Gutenberg books, although very readable, could be better. There are probably other sources for free books, but I haven't had enough time to search for them yet.
Point four, a pretty good point: I have so far only used .txt, .rtf, and .pdf files in the reader. The .txt and .rtf work pretty good, turning the page is about as fast as if you had to turn a paper page. The only .pdf I have looked at is the user guide and the pages sometimes take several seconds to turn. I don't have enough experience with the .pdf to say whether they are all like that or not.
Point five, something necessary: You have three different font sizes. Some free books are pretty good and the three font sizes work very well, but some free books have a very small font so even at the largest size offered, it could be difficult for some people to read.
Point six, a very good point: you can add memory with memory cards, there is a slot for an SD memory card and a slot for a Memory Stick Duo. I don't use these for the books because I have had just under a hundred books on the reader with pleny of room left on the internal memory. What I use the extra space for will be explained in:
Point seven, a very good point IMHO: You can listen to MP3s while reading. This is where I use the extra memory cards.
Point eight, an unnecessary feature IMO: you can look at pictures in black and white on the reader. So what.
Point nine: I recommend buying the extra charger so you don't have to use the USB plug to charge it. I think charging it with the USB plug is a pain in the neck.
My final analysis: I would probably give it four and a half stars rather than five, but I would recommend the sony reader to people that can afford it and that would use it. And buy the extra charger.
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