Sony PRS 505

I have for many years been a fan of eBooks (as you can probably tell from a few previous postings. As a result I have tried many different systems and stores to purchase from. Which brings me nicely to my soapbox rant about eBooks… Why so many proprietary formats?!? And why DRM protection… If I have purchased a book, I’d really like to read it on whatever system I happen to have at the time, or I may as well just buy the paper back.  

But I digress, this post is about the Sony PRS 505 (Portable Reader System). As I said, I have tried many systems, on the PC, and on mobile platforms (Windows Mobile etc..). When the first digital readers started appearing, you can bet I wanted one of them, however, they are sooo.. expensive that really I couldn’t justify the cost. The Amazon Kindle has never reached the UK shores, so really, there was little choice other than the Sony. Recently though I had the opportunity to pick one of these up…. so I did.

The unit itself feels very well made, and sturdy, you do get the feeling that if you inadvertantly dropped it, that it would survive … a felling I have no wish to test if at all possible. The cover that comes with it, is sufficient if a bit pedestrian, although the in-built magnets that keep the covers closed is a nice addition.

In use the PRS 505 does pretty much what you’d expect, you can browse the books you have installed by Author or Title, and read the books. You get a couple of options of how to turn the pages, both reasonably well places for lefties and righties, and the ePaper system provides an extremely clear view in pretty much all conditions I have tried, from normal lit rooms, to outdoor full sunlight, with no glare. All-in-all, excellent.

Now the niggles. Firstly the lact of a backlight. This is good for the eyes apparently, some of the cheaper readers on the market now, do in fact use TFT technology, but after a while of reading the backlight does strain the eyes, so the facility was left out. All well and good in daylight or a lit room, but not so good to read, whilst your partner is asleep. However, since I got the unit at a knocked down cost, I actually sprung for the booklight and leather cover option, which provides a clear perspex cover that flips over the ePaper display, and lights up, with power provide by AA batteries housed in the spine of the cover, this is excellent in use, if looking a bit of an after-thought in the design stakes. However, if you are thinking of getting the Sony, then I would suggest getting it, as it really does increase the usability of the Reader.

Next the interface. This is clunky at best, but after a while, you do get used to it’s shortfalls, and having to go back a step to go forward a different way, so no real issues here. It has the time held in it’s memory, but there doesn’t seem to be a way of displaying it constantly, so you can keep an eye on it. You have to instead bookmark where you are, back track through the menus to the main menu, and enter the Settings menu item to see what the time is, then back you go and on to your bookmark… why this couldn’t be popped at the foot of the page I really don’t know…

Now on to the PC installed software (note, no MAC version) [EDIT: 10/09/09 - There is now in fact a OS-X version...just in time for 'Snow Leaopard'...hint, hint..] this allows you to sync your device to your PC, which on the face of it seems a good thing, however, you need to add the books to your PC interface, then select the directories to sync. Now if you happen to move the eBook files on your PC, and connect your Reader, the auto sync removes all the books for you… very thoughtful… NOT!! you then have to add all the books again to the software, and sync again to get them back. A better way of handling this, is to put all the books on an SD card, and insert into the reader, this is somewhat safer, but removes the point of the software to be honest… Another issue here is the ePub format eBooks, you need to install Adobe Digital Editions (OS-X version available) and sync these with the reader, and what you do here, cannot be seen by the Sony software. This causes an issue if you set up a collection for instance where some books are in Sony LRF format, and others happen to be in ePUB, since you cannot manually add an ePub to a collection. The way round this, is to create a collection on your Reader from the software on the PC, then add the books from the list showing in your Reader ‘Books’ listing, again not ideal, but a work-around that, err… works.

Finally, being in the UK, I cannot buy any books from the official Sony site!! Err, why?!?! There is a deal now between Sony and Waterstones, so potentially this removes this issue, but actually it doesn’t, it actually compunds the problem, for 2 major reasons, firstly, Waterstones doesn’t have nearly as many books as the Sony site, limiting your book choices quite drastically. Secondly, the Waterstones web site is absolutely abysmal in use, the search doesn’t work, correctly, as your constantly given standard books as results, and not eBooks, and finding anything in the first place is a miracle! I have written to Waterstones, and they assure me that they are concentrating at the moment on ‘getting the ebook content up to date’, and are ‘aware of the shortfalls in the site’, these ‘will be rectified as soon as possible’.

It may look as if there are so many issues that this unit really isn’t worth shelling out for, but actually this isn’t true. There are ways round all the little problems I have found so far, but you do need to invest a bit of time, and creative thinking, if you can’t do this (or don’t want to, then don’t buy the Sony…. and I suspect you’ll be far happier with a standard paper bound book anyhow). But if you do spend the time, you have a good little unit, that will give you a lot of pleasure.

~Mark~