Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader by Sony
|
List Price: Our Price: $70.00 You Save: $329.00 (82%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
|---|
Digital camera reviews of Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader
Digital camera Review: Amazing Little eBook Device
Summary: 5 Stars
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, 600x800 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.
Digital camera Review: Amost perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
I was familiar with the Sony 505 before I purchased this unit. Both my son and daughter-in-law have them. He uses his while traveling. She uses hers at home.
I read reviews of the newer Sony reader (700) and decided to buy the 505 instead because it provides better contrast. You can do a web search and find photo comparisons if you are interested.
I bought the unit for my wife, an avid reader, for the following reasons: (1) You can increse the font size. Her corrected vision is such that reading paperbacks is difficult due to the font size. (2) You don't have to hold the book open. She has arthritis and holding hardbacks and paperbacks open agravates it. (3) Add to that the ability to store hundreds of books in such a small lightweight package and it was almost a no brainer.
The only issue is that it would be nice to be able to flag read books and have them appear on a submenu so that she can easily see the books she has not read and yet be able to look at all the titles by an author so she doesn't forget and order the same book again.
Other than that ... perfect.
Digital camera Review: As advertised
Summary: 5 Stars
This product is one of the coolest I have ever owned. The screen looks so much like paper to me, sometimes I think I am reading an actual book! Its pretty simple to set up right out of the box. It charges right from a USB port in your computer. It also comes with some pre-installed reading material, a few songs, and a few pictures loaded onto it. The pictures look nice but are restricted. (obviously not color) The free offer from Sony for 100 classics is nice, and so far I have loaded several books from that selection onto my device. Anyway, there are VAST amounts of books available that I believe will satisfy any reader. Many are reasonably priced between 4 and 8 dollars. There is enough on-board memory (210MB when I checked properties of the device) to hold many, many books. I have 38 books loaded now and they occupy just over 40MB (including a very large Bible of over 4 MB alone) If you add a memory card (and two types are supported - Sony's Pro Duo and the more universal SD format) then the limits are probably beyond your needs. A one gig card would hold roughly 2000 books at an average file size of 500k each (file sizes do vary) Battery life? Well, its early to say - but I have almost completed two novels and the meter has not even budged off of full. That seems to fall into line with the claim that Sony boasts. As far as the battery running down with no use, I do not consider that a flaw with regular use and every product I have owned with a battery system like this does the same thing. Thats why they tell you to always charge a battery if the product has been sitting for extensive periods (like a camera for instance) The display is easy to read under decent lighting conditions but I did buy the clip-on light as I believe it will compliment this reader quite well. I recommend it! I also did a side by side comparison of an actual book to this device's screen and its difficult to see a difference. Its not bright white but neither is most books pages I have seen. The fact that you can zoom the text is an added bonus. You certainly do not have that option with paper. Anyway, I wanted to get back into reading and wanted one of these for a long time. I am happy I took the plunge with this model. I am a very happy customer! If you want a possible future color model, then waiting is the only option. But if reading many books from one location is what you desire, this product should not disappoint.
Update: After reading a couple of reviews about 64 bit incompatibilities, I wanted to say that it would be a real shame if Sony did not address this issue. I have a 32 bit system so I do not encounter this issue now, bit it could be a serious issue in the future. On a downside, the unit does take extra time to load larger files. My Bible takes 20-30 seconds to load. But that is surely an exception as my experience so far sees most book files much smaller than that. Watch the price you pay and be sure to check Sony's site. A particular retailer here is charging grossly over the normal price. Do your homework before buying!
Digital camera Review: Assisted reading for the impaired.. Cool Tool!
Summary: 4 Stars
Seems to function well, took a bit to figure it out. The only irk so far is safely removing hardware, it doesn't want to. Keeps prompting to try later as if it is doing something in background without being evident.
Reads clearly and without strain to hands or eyes. Picked up the illuminated cover to go with it and it is very sound and functional. Transfer of downloaded files from Sony to computer is easy and transfer to device is fluid.
PDF file transfer from Adobe went well. Music on SD card works.
Should be no problem adding photos or music to Reader.
Device is a pleasure to hold and is visually appealing unlke some other oddball devices out there which shall go unnamed.
Digital camera Review: Awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
I think this is an awesome product. It is a little bit of a pain to edit existing PDF metadata when you add them to the reader.
I found Calibre is pretty good for editing everything I need.
Also, if you get this, you should know that you can download for free all the classics. If it doesnt have a copyright, like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Charles Dickens, etc... you can easily add them for free from the Sony Store within the software.
That part seems to get overlooked a lot. 500,000 free books! Yay!