Sony Reader PRS-505

A slim panel (measured at 8mm, 8.66mm including the buttons) of brushed metal with a low reflectance screen on the front with controls around it. There are ten vertical soft keys (they do whatever the graphics that appear next to them say) and a pair of page-forwards and page-back buttons on the vertical outside edge. The bottom bears the menu button and four-way scroll-plus-enter keys and the circular page turner button for thumb operation. Next to this are the bookmark and the page magnifier buttons. This latter provides three different size choices of font and pagination to suit those who require larger print. The chromed piece across the top carries the spring-loaded power toggle switch and slots for SD cards and Sony MemoryStick Duo storage media. (up to 16GB which is roughly 13,000 books!) These slots have a grey plastic blank in them to prevent dust ingress until use. The base chromed piece has an inset metal bar for a lanyard loop (although that is one accessory that is not yet offered) the USB power port, the 5.2V DC power socket for use with the optional mains charger and a headphone socket. There is also a rocker volume control next to this, as the unit can record and play MP3 files primarily intended for audio book use, this does have Sony Walkman quality audio electronics inside, with good sound quality. The ‘Spine’ of the unit is affixed on two binder bars to a simple tan coloured wrap-around Vinyl ‘book cover’. Accessories include a Silicone ‘rubber armour’ jacket similar to a mobile phone type, a black leather cover to replace the vinyl one, or a ‘Tri-Fold’ cover,  a screen protector sheet as used by iPod owners or an illuminated case for use in low light conditions. Also, there is the PRS-AFXL1 LED flexi-neck book light. Sony PRS-505 reader comes with one disc to install the e-Book library-handling software and another disc of 100 Classic Books (while stocks last) and a single USB lead. A single tiny ‘reset’ button is found in the centre of the back panel.
– Holds around 160 electronic books (e-Books) or more in 192MB Flash memory
– Smaller than a typical paperback, 8mm thick and very light: it’s a stylish aluminium unit that fits in your coat pocket
– Easy to read six inch eInk® ‘Electronic Paper’ screen, 170 pixels per inch. High resolution and 8-level multi-shade grey scale give fine detail on text or black-and-white photos, illustrations, etc.
– Unlike a PC, screen has no backlight or flicker to give the experience of reading a paper page
– Easy to use menu and simple, intuitive controls
– Add bookmarks, scroll smoothly down the page, read page-by-page or ‘fast forward’ through the book
– Automatically find the page you were last reading-Call up your stored books quickly: by Author, Title or Date
– MemoryStick„¢ PRO DUO and SD/SDHC Card slots allow you to optionally increase capacity up to around 16GB or 13,000 titles
– Compatible Formats:Unsecured/Free; e-Books & text files; EPUB e-Book, BBeB Book, Adobe® PDF, Microsoft® Word, TXT, RTF
DRM (Secure/Purchased) e-Books and text files EPUB e-Books (Adept) BBeB e-Books (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio files mp3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
Image & Photo files JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
– Very low power consumption of Lithium Ion battery allows 6,800 page turns from a single battery charge
– Can be fully charged in 4 hours from a laptop or PC via supplied USB cable
– Two hours charge time using optional UK/continental mains Adaptor (ACS-5220E)
– Uses the EPUB standard: the most widely used e-Book type. But can also read other very common text documents.
– Can also display most common image and photo file types. NB images are black and white, not colour.
– Use with headphones to listen to music while you read (mp3 or AAC files). Sony recommend MDR-NC22CX in-ear, noise cancelling headphones, but any Sony headphones are suitable.
– Supplied pre-loaded with sample new e-Books and excerpts, plus (while stocks last) a disc containing 100 FREE complete and unabridged Classics favourites
– All necessary software (e-Book Library) plus quick start instructions supplied. Full user guide is included on PDF
– Comes with soft tan case. Other cases available as optional accessories
– Weight 260g/9Oz
– Dimensions: 122(w)x175.3(h)x7.6(d)mm
Review by Adam Rayner
I may be more qualified to review this item than just about anyone! I don’t normally harp on about my antecedents but I am the son of author Claire Rayner, who at peak had more than eighty books in print and has ninety-one books to her name, let alone the zillions of other words in a fifty year career as a household name (like Harpic, as she used to say.) Also, I am of course obsessed by all things mobile and being brought up soaked in books and writing and being a mobile sort of a guy, this is absolutely the sort of thing that I adore.
This is one of those products that we all ‘knew’ about for years without ever worrying about what it would be. It has been there in the digital clause in copyright statements about ‘technologies yet to be developed’. The key here is eInk. This is a new display technology that needs flap-all current to allow a ‘page’ (screenful) of text to be displayed with no flicker or even looking like we imagine any kind of ‘display’ to look. As a result there is no such thing as viewing angle. If you can see the screen at an angle enough to have read it if it were paper, you can read the Sony Reader PRS-505.
The controls are utterly intuitive and the soft keys up the right hand edge become a ten-long list of contents, or pages of book title lists or the few utilities controls – which cover deleting books (the digital sacrilege as bad as burning paper ones in my humble opinion but it is really about digital file security you would keep backups and only delete to make more space in flash memory, if say, you really knew you would never read any Shakespeare, you philistine!) and clearing the Reader’s history and bookmarks.
I found scrolling around, getting into the lists of the 100 books and eight excerpts that my one was loaded with was a simple and totally manual-free experience. Reading the thing is as pleasant as a book and the paired choices of page controls means that the ergonomics have been thought of. You can hold it in the left hand and press the page turner rocker in bottom left with your thumb.
I have started to wade through Walden or Life in The Woods by Henry David Thoreau, which is one of those classics I bought but never got round to reading. The disc the device arrives with is an absolute treasure trove of English literature and once the discs have run out and are no longer supplied with the product I feel the VFM score will have to drop but right now the �200 cost has to be lower than simply walking into Waterstones and decreeing that you want two yards of fine literature for your home library.
In a superb chicken-building exercise, the Waterstones bookshops (which I adore and have a doodah card for that offers a better discount than Nectar or Clubcard!) have entered into a marketing partnership with Sony for the Reader’s first year. They are selling them as fast as they can be got in and the first lot went whoosh in three days flat.
So as well as finding the Reader and its accessories selection on the Sony website, it is also in the e-Books section of the Waterstones site as well. I went and had a shufty at both and found that while the selection is wide, it is still like the virtual version of being led from the library to the bookshelf in the spare room, as the number of titles is still embryonic in relative terms. This is being worked on at a furious space in the publishing industry I gather.
As well as Digital Rights Management (DRM) protected works, the system can be used with out-of copyright e-Books and best of all, unlike iTunes, the Sony system has by deliberate and enlightened choice been made as an open codec.
At present the library is up to 9,000 titles and publishers are falling over each other to get their back catalogue digitised so as to join in the new era. It’s a bit like the early days of CD when huge back catalogues were digitised. In fact I have been onto the Society of Authors and learned more about how it is done for my Mum’s back catalogue, the rights for which are securely in possession of the Rayner Family Business! Apparently, the books are sent and manually scanned I am sure of this as the far east, India amongst other places, is where they get sent and that has to be about literate labour that costs less than in the west.
The words memory stick have been inexorably creeping into the language for what are properly called flash drives or even USB sticks but the Sony evolved true MemoryStick, now the MemoryStick PRO DUO goes up to 16GB and that is reckoned to be 13,000 books. Don’t forget there are two slots, the other could hold another few GB on an SD, even an SDHC and they can be 16GB too!
How many 16GB MemorySticks or SDHCs would it take to hold the entire contents, digitised, of the British Library, I wonder? It would fit in a lunch box I reckon
Simply put, this is the biggest innovation in book publishing since Penguin introduced the paper-back book! In fact some have been so bullish as to posit a Simple History of Reading.
It runs, Papyrus scrolls, Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press (1439), The Penguin paperback (1935), Sony Reader 2008
The Sony PRS-505 Reader scores highly enough to garner a terribly rare Talk Audio State of the Art Award
And you know what? This new technology delivers something that a PDA, a tiny notebook PC or even a laptop cannot. It gives you the littlest room in the house as a place you can read digitally. It has been extensively tested in my house with the item left lying around in the heap of my wife’s underwear catalogues, my son’s copy of How really Cool Stuff Works, my vanity-published Pike book by Eddie Turner and old copies of the Anglers Mail. In a month of bath-time steaming, it hasn’t cared or done anything else except act like a book I left in the loo.
It’s just there’s enough reading material in it to last me for many months’ catharsis!
Build Quality 10.0
Appearance 9.0
Ease Of Installation 10.0
Effectiveness 10.0
Value For Money 10.0
Overall rating 9.8

This is the page on the Waterstone’s site that sells the reader and its accessories:
http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/navigate.do?ctx=10030
The Classic Titles Included Free While Stocks Last (I’d get in quick, this is literary riches!)
Title Author
Aesop’s Fables Aesop
The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
The Works of Aristotle Aristotle
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin
Beowulf Beowulf
Up from Slavery Booker T. Washington
Bram Stoker’s Dracula Bram Stoker
On the Origin of Species Charles Darwin
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
David Copperfield Charles Dickens
Bleak House Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe
The Fall of the House of Usher Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven Edgar Allan Poe
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
Middlemarch George Eliot
Don Juan George Gordon Byron
Walden Henry David Thoreau
The Turn of the Screw Henry James
The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
Moby Dick Herman Melville
Billy Budd Herman Melville
The Odyssey of Homer Translated by Alexander Pope
The Iliad of Homer Homer
The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Emma Jane Austen
Mansfield Park Jane Austen
Persuasion Jane Austen
Faust Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Paradise Lost John Milton
Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
Celtic Fairy Tales Joseph Jacobs
Around the World in 80 Days Jules Verne
A Journey to the Interior of the Earth Jules Verne
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories Kate Chopin
War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking Glass Lewis Carroll
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain
The Prince and the Pauper Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes,
The House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Prince Niccolo Machiavelli
The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
The Republic Plato
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson
The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling
Captains Courageous: A Story of the Grand Banks Rudyard Kipling
The Man Who Would Be King Rudyard Kipling
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Babbitt Sinclair Lewis
The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving
Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
Hamlet William Shakespeare
Macbeth William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare
The Phoenix and the Turtle William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Julius Ceasar William Shakespeare
The Sonnets William Shakespeare
Othello William Shakespeare
The Tempest William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Lear William Shakespeare
The Divine Comedy (full version) Dante Alighieri
The Sentimentalists George Meredith
20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Connect Classics) Jules Verne
The Black Arrow Robert Louis Stevenson
The Wife and other stories Anton Chekhov
Uncle Vanya Anton Chekhov
Letters on England Voltaire
Pierrette Honore de Balzac
Paz Honore de Balzac
The Chouans Honore de Balzac
The Purse Honore de Balzac
Sandra Belloni George Meredith
Rhoda Fleming George Meredith
Common Sense Thomas Paine
English Fairy Tales Joseph Jacobs