Sony Ebook Reader PRS-500 review.

zhopudey

Skilled
Here's my new toy :D The Sony ebook reader.




PRS stands for Portable Reader System



It comes with a nice soft cover, which has a velvety feel to it.





The screen is a 6" e-ink display capable of 4-tones of grayscale. It is really the next best thing to paper. Incredibly low on power requirements (sony states the reader can last 7500 page turns on a single charge), no problem of viewing angles, no flicker, no glare, as soothing to the eyes as a real book. :hap2:


It is not a touchscreen, but the joystick and the 10 buttons will never let you complain. Navigation using the buttons is much faster than the joystick. One disadvantage in the completely flat file structure - You can't use any directories. But we can create collections to help us organise books.


The text size be adjusted in 3 steps. This is the smallest size (the (S) at the bottom of the screen indicates that)



Medium.



And large. So far, I've only used small.



I've put in some comics as well. The 4-tone screen manages to render comics really well. 167ppi make the images very crisp. Only problem is that 6" is too small for full page comics. The reader doesn't let us zoom into images, which is a drawback :(



Small comic strips are no problem, however :D



Here, I fired up photoshop and collated 4 images on a single page. Very tedious job, but looks real good in the end.



We can bookmark any page we want, and the bookmarks can later be accessed from the main menu. The big button glows a cool blue on pressing the mark button. :cool: Pressing it again at the same page removes the bookmark.



Here are some settings. I have not bothered with any of these yet.



Did try out the orientation. This could be useful for the garfield strips :D



Dimensions are a very comfortable 175.6mm by 123.6mm by 13.8mm, and it weighs 250gms. Fits very firmly in one hand.



One handed operation is a breeze, in case you're in a bus or train, and hanging on for dear life :p



You can listen to music as well. Just pop in some mp3s, and enjoy some cool tunes while you are reading. But I've not bothered with it. Then there's the DC input, the port for the optional cradle, the USB port, and the hook if you want to attach a cord. This hook thing actually has a specific name - I'd read it in mobile phone reviews :p Its called an eyelet or something.


The reader comes with 64MB RAM,2MB(NOR) + 128MB(NAND) Flash (91.9MB user accessible). Additional storage can be added through SD/MMC or Memory stick. I think you'll need an adapter for MMC.


Ohh and btw, this is for sale :p 16K shipped. :cool2: PM me for more details.
 
Ahh you finally got it :p

Ok i can vouch for this product. Using it for 8 months (btw i was the first to get in India :cool: pre ordered from sony ;)) If you are a book lover you will really enjoy this. Pricey yes but worth it.

Some pros:

Amazing format supports. you can read pdf's, txt, rtf and almost any format can be ported to bbeb(lrf).

Great battery life. You will normally never have to charge it. Just leave it connected to USB for some time when you are transferring books.

Bookmarking. As good as it gets with multiple bookmarks allowed. It also mantains a page history so you can forget the bookmark and still start at the same place.

Very good screen. It feels like a book ;) only much lighter.

Cons:

Bad button placement :p (where you need the next page button most, for a right hander, you won't find it :p )

No colour, so no real fun with comics :p its good at start but after some time its no fun

And formatting books is time consuming if you want in lrf proper format. Not that it matters, i read unformatted anyway, but if you are the kind who likes formatting, this is not gonna be fun, unless ofcourse you buy it from connect

Books are not cheap. If you plan to buy lot of books as for studying, you are going to be spending quite a lot :p

If you listen to music while reading, the battery is gonna drain fast.

No backlight, so forget dark reading.

Its a great product though. Considering the best in its class is a cool 40k(iliad) the price is pretty good ;)
 
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