Sony PRS-505 Portable Digital e-Reader System (Silver) by Sony
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Digital camera reviews of Sony PRS-505 Portable Digital e-Reader System (Silver)
Digital camera Review: Cost of books from Sony
Summary: 2 Stars
I purchased a Sony 505 eBook reader because I moved to China for a year and was not able to buy pocket books, except at airports where they are very expensive - over $ 20 each. The eBook has proven a valuable replacement and obviously the Kindle was not viable because you can only down load books when in the US. But has anyone compared the prices of Sony eBooks recently? The latest release are almost double the cost of Kindle. Everything I read before buying the eBook was that the cost of books was normally between $ 9 - 12 each. Now the offers are close to $20 and I think that Sony is trying to take advantage of their customers - they should be competitive in their market. Sony lost 2 stars from me for their cost of ebooks.Digital camera Review: Couldn't live without it
Summary: 4 Stars
I looked for months at buying an ereader, and finally decided on the PRS because of a discount available. I'm glad I did.
I love this thing. I wish I could afford a nicer cover then the tan case it comes with - something that feels more secure - but that is my only gripe.
I'm constantly worried about the screen cracking because of all the reviews of it happening, but it hasn't happened in the last six months so...*shrugs*. Even with my 3 year old sometimes getting his hands on it, it being in my backpack for school, sitting on it (on the couch sometimes to my horror) etc. Seems durable to me.
I read about 1-2 books a week and my wife says I am never without my ereader. I put it in my backpack to school (securely), have it in the car with me while running errands, bring it on car trips, read it while the wife's watching tv...you name it.
Hmm, that's about it. For anyone who owns this, I would suggest getting a copy of adobe acrobat so you can format your text PDF's easily.
I gave it 4/5 stars only because of a couple con's I listed. I think it honestly deserves 5/5, but am trying to be fair ;)
Pros:
The display is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Can hold SD Cards. This is the biggest boost to the 505. I have read somewhere that someone organizes their books with SD cards and think that is a great idea, although it is sad he must resort to that instead of having a better filing system. But, a 1gb card has thus far been more then adequate for me.
Is easy to upload content(with calibre). I don't use the software it came with, instead I use calibre's: [...]. I honestly think without calibre my experience with the 505 would be diminished.
Portable. I bring this everywhere (even in the tub sometimes). I absolutely love this thing.
Feels like quality in your hands (Not like its going to break). Its aluminum or something, and is pretty well made. The buttons feel solid and not like they are going to break or get stuck or anything. Sony knows their business.
Comfortable to navigate. It doesn't have a touch screen, but honestly you don't need one. It's very easy to navigate back and forth between pages, or jump to numbered pages by typing in the numbers. It keeps a history of your reading (by pages/date&time) so if you jump far ahead/behind and get lost, you can go straight to the history and see where you left off.
Very long battery life (without MP3 running anyways). I go through about 2-3 books before realizing my battery is down to its last leg and plug it in at night.
Cons:
I would like to see a better way of organizing content, such as folders or something. This is the #1 worst problem of the PRS in my opinion, it can get cluttered very quickly. Therefore I have gotten in the habit of organizing items by date added, especially because of newspapers.
The MP3 player is a useless piece of junk, something you would see in the first generation MP3 players...not much thought put into this. I was somewhat disappointed with this.
Doesn't handle large PDFs well at all. Best if they are formatted to 3.5x4.79. (I am looking forward to the plastic logics ereader for this problem)
If I get a very large newspaper from calibre, it sometimes crashes/shuts down, loosing all my bookmarks etc from the last time it started up. Therefore I have gotten into the habit of restarting my PRS before opening up a large newspaper so I save all my bookmarks.
Only came with a USB charger initially. I bought a wall charger and am very happy now.
Digital camera Review: Definitely NOT for PDF, simply unreadable, Unhelpful help files
Summary: 1 Stars
It was almost a DOA experience. I dragged 3 PDF files into a newly purchased ebook reader yesterday. One was a 24 pages technical file with a size of 2.4M. Using either horizontal view or vertical view, the file was simple illegible. What was more annoying was that it took 3 minutes to shift between small font view to middle font view, and after that, 3 or 4 seconds to respond to the command to turn every single page. Yet the file was still not legible.
As if this was not frustrating enough, when I tried an even larger file of 10m, pushing the size button was a death sentence. The ebook waited for 30 minutes to allow me open one page. After the next command, it just stayed frozen. Remember, this is not a computer, and I cannot find alt-ctrl-del to stop whatever process that was messing things up. After another two hours, (in the meantime I was watching PBS frontline video -- the Mormons) , already very much bored:), I found the book was still happily displaying the first page with a staying-there-forever attitude.
I looked up in the ebook reader help, and it simply does not tell me what to do. So I went to bed with dreams of all strange thoughts, and this morning I find the ebook is still displaying that holy page, but the battery is drained.
Searching on the internet, I found two interesting articles, one claims that the experience with a SONY ebook reader would be very good until you drop a few PDF files in it. Sony website support does tell you what to do when you ebook is frozen (this is the second article):
There is a reset button at the back. Push it.
But this is my question to SONY: since this is already in 3 out of your 6 hottest topics, why do not you put it in the help files?
In conclusion:
If you are thinking about using this ebook to read a lot of PDF files, the ebook is NOT for you unless your PDF files have super large fonts.
Digital camera Review: Device is on the for more than 1 month!
Summary: 1 Stars
Please be careful of this merchant, they claimed it's shipped for more than 45 days! Not yet arrived!Digital camera Review: Didn't last 10 months!!!!
Summary: 1 Stars
It worked well (though many books I wanted were not available) until it stopped working after only nine and a half months. It was supposed to be under warranty, but Sony would not honor the warranty. Don't buy this (or anything else by Sony). I would choose the Nook if you're thinking of the reader. It is much better and close to the same price point.