Sony PRS-505 Reader

Electronic books (or electronic book readers, to be pedantic) with displays indistinguishable from the printed page have long been a pipe dream, but technology is now at the point where such gadgets are not only possible, but also affordable.

Sony first dabbled with the e-ink screens necessary for such a device back in 2004, with the Japan-only LIBRIe, and then launched the much improved PRS-500 Reader in the US two years later. The PRS-505 Reader followed in 2007, and this slightly revised model is now available in the UK for the first time. So, does it spell the end for paper? We doubt it, but not for the reasons you might think…

The PRS-505 Reader is a little shorter and a little wider than a typical paperback book, but it’s only as thick as about 110 pages. As you might expect for a Sony product, it’s a sleek and stylish device, and one that feels sufficiently well-made to withstand being knocked about in a bag all day. You’ll need to keep it clipped into the supplied wallet to stop the screen and silver metallic case from getting too battered, but this is tan leather rather than the usual naff vinyl, and lets you hold the Reader like a book.

Design obviously doesn’t count for much if the display doesn’t live up to expectations, and that’s where previous e-book readers have fallen well short. No matter how sharp they are, traditional LCD technology simply isn’t up to acting as ‘electronic paper’, but electrophoretic technology is.

Colour electrophoretic displays are still some way off, but the 6in greyscale panel used in the PRS-505 Reader and does a great job of rendering black-on-white text almost as crisply as on the printed page of a book or newspaper. Actually, as with other devices, the Reader displays very dark grey text on pale grey background – manufacturers invariably claim that this lower contrast colour scheme is easier on the eye, but we suspect it’s more to do with maintaining smoother text with the comparatively limited eight shades of grey that the technology is currently stuck at.

Nonetheless, the PRS-505 Reader’s screen is very crisp and looks nothing like a screen you’ve ever seen on any other gadget. Text almost appears to be printed on the inside of the plastic panel and doesn’t distort under finger pressure, nor disappear when the screen is held at an extreme angle.

Electrophoretic technology doesn’t require power to display an image, only to change it. This obviously helps with battery life, but it also means that the entire display needs to be ‘flushed’ before a new image can be displayed. The PRS-505 Reader does this faster than most, but a ‘page turn’ still takes just over a second as the image is inverted, cleared and a new one displayed.

Unlike that on the iRex Iliad we reviewed a year ago, the PRS-505 Reader’s screen isn’t touch-sensitive and its menu system is controlled via a series of buttons around the front of the case. Sony has built-in a fair amount of redundancy in the controls, perhaps in an attempt to make the Reader as foolproof as possible.

The strip of number keys to the right of the screen can be used to select the corresponding numbered option within the menu system, or you can scroll through the options using the four-way control pad. The number keys can also be used to jump to a page number in an e-book, or you can use the page turn buttons on the right edge of the case, press left and right on the four-way pad, or click the circular page-turn control at the bottom left of the screen. Despite this bounty of page-turn buttons though, none fall readily to hand with the PRS-505 Reader held with one hand.

The menu system is easy to understand and although deeply nested, the Menu button (bottom right of the screen) always takes you back a level. Books can be browsed by title, author and creation date (date added would make far more sense), and can also be grouped into ‘collections’. Pages can be bookmarked with a single click while reading, but the last opened page is always saved for when you return to an unfinished read. Bookmarks can also be browsed, complete with an excerpt of the appropriate page – handy if you’ve marked a page in a textbook for later reference, but can’t remember the book it was in.

Its image quality may be impressive, but the PRS-505 Reader isn’t the most flexible e-book reader we’ve seen when it comes to displaying e-books. The three font sizes are sufficient for eyes of all ages, but there’s no option to change the font, line-spacing, margins or justification – all are dictated by the ebook itself. On a similar note, nor is there a backlight for night-time reading, but while this seems like a missed opportunity for such a gadget, the PRS-505 Reader is no different to a real book in that respect – and the matte screen is just as legible in artificial light as it is in broad daylight.

Of course, an e-book reader is only as good as the e-books you can read on it – and we’re talking quantity, not quality, here. US PRS-505 Reader owners get to buy all kinds of reading material from the Sony Connect online store . UK owners have no such luck and the ‘eBook Store’ link in the Sony eBook Library (a manager application for ebooks, images and audio) just points you at the so-so selection at the Waterstone’s site.

As it turns out, UK owners won’t be missing much and Waterstone’s ebook prices are just as outrageous as those at Sony Connect. In other words, if you thought that the lack of materials, manufacturing process and distribution network would make ebooks considerably cheaper than their physical counterparts, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.

At the time of writing, the best-selling fiction ebook at Waterstones (China Dreams, by Sid Smith) had a list price £1 higher than that of the paperback at Amazon, but a special introductory offer means you can buy it for 80p less. The next two best-selling ebooks, however, both cost rather more than their paperback editions, special offers notwithstanding. And so it goes.

Unfortunately, there’s little recourse from the ugly greed of digital booksellers and publishers, since the PRS-505 Reader only supports two protected ebook formats – ePUB and PDF. More and more commercial ebooks are being distributed in these formats (with Penguin being the latest to go digital), but you still won’t be able to avail yourself of the wider selection and more reasonable prices from stores like FictionWise. Well, not without some effort on your part, at least – there are free tools to convert other, more popular, open and protected ebooks to a Reader-compatible format. Calibre and Convert LIT are two must-have tools, and the MobileRead site is stuffed with good advice for PRS-505 owners with less money than sense.

We’ll give short shrift to the PRS-505 Reader’s ability to play MP3s and display photos – it works, but they're useful extras rather than a must-have features. What should prove more tempting is the price. Now compared to the price of a typical paperback, £200 may not seem like such a steal, but it is pretty good in ebook reader terms – Amazon’s Kindle available costs $359 (around £190, though you can’t buy it in the UK), while the cheapest Irex iLiad Reader costs £389.

The PRS-505 Reader isn’t the ‘iPod moment’ that ebooks need to enter the mass market consciousness, but it’s the best effort we’ve seen to date. It ticks a lot of the right boxes for an ebook reader and as long as you’re prepared do a bit of work on your reading material before you actually get to read it’s the best device of its kind – at least in the UK.