I have had my Sony PRS 505 EBook reader for about three weeks now, and I have read about 5 books on it, so time for a review.

I will start off by saying that in general I am very happy with it – it does exactly what it is designed for (to read books!) very well.

BTW: The bookstore says that you need to be in the USA to buy books, well I am not in USA and it accepts my (non-USA) credit cards just fine.

Below are my thoughts:

Likes

• It is small, slim & light
• The cover magnetically clips closed, so it shouldn’t accidentally fall open
• You can load plenty of books on the 200meg build in ram, and there are both an SD and a Pro-Duo card slot for more books
• There is a good selection of books on the Sony website – but it could be better.
• If you buy your books via the included software, it automatically imports the book into your library for auto-sync next time you plug in the book reader
• You can create custom catalogues "categories" of books (such as to read, read, fantasy, classics etc)
• The rechargeable battery lasts for plenty of books, and charges fully via USB in about 1 hour (there is an optional plug in charger as well)
• The books on the website are inexpensive
• I found some easy to use and free software on the web to convert text files into formatted ebooks (it does natively support text files, but then you cannot format them nicely. eg justified text). You can download BBoE Binder here.
• Very high quality screen – you can read for hours without eye fatigue.
• Portrait / landscape mode. If you use the screen in landscape, it is roughly the width of a standard paperback book.
• You can view the books in different font sizes
• A lot of gadgets are made for right-handed people – as a "lefty" I had no problems with the interface.

Dislike

• It is slow to transition pages – but I believe that it is much faster than on the 500 book reader. I am sure that future version will be faster and faster. You can learn to time the transitions for minimal disruption to reading.
• It does support PDF’s, but they are difficult to read.
• The PC software is clunky to use.
• The built-in clock can only by viewed when setting it. It would be nice if you can see the clock on the status bar – next to the page number. Currently the clock is pretty pointless.
• You cannot see how full the memory is – well I couldn’t find out how!
• The proprietary book format worries me. Am I buying books that I will be unable to read in the future on a different book reader? I wish that Sony, Amazon etc would come out with a standard ebook format that will work across all of the book readers.
• The forward and backward buttons are too small (but then Amazon Kindle users complain that they are too big – so perhaps a happy medium is needed)
• MP3′s don’t support playlists – but then I didn’t buy an MP3 player – I bought a book reader.
• You are supposed to be able to read RSS news feeds but
  • You can only select from a predefined list of feeds.
  • You have to login to the store and manually update the feeds.
  • I could not find the actual feeds on my book reader – I have no idea where they are.

Oh, the full specs are here.

Looking back, I see that most the dislikes that I have can be fixed via fairly simple software updates, so I hope that a few patches are in the pipeline.

I know that some people will say that the Amazon Kindle allows for you to buy books online directly from the reader, but how often do you REALLY need to do that? Ok, the Kindle does allow for you to get you newspapers delivered to you (if you are in the USA), which is pretty cool.

So, would I buy it again? – YES

Would I recommend it? – YES