The Sony PRS-505 Reader vs. The Amazon Kindle
Who Wins The Head-to-Head?Only a few years ago, the industry said that the Portable digital reader device was dead. No one wanted to use a computer to read a book, the wisdom went; instead, they wanted to hold a book in their hands as they thumbed through it.
Sony and Amazon are both trying to prove industry wisdom wrong, and succeeding. With great new display technologies, improved power use, and a much expanded library to draw from, ereaders are here to stay. Here's a head-to-head comparison of both these market leaders:
Display Features
No matter what other features are in your ereader, it won't matter if you can't read the screen and turn through your books with little trouble. The display is what killed all the previous versions of ereaders – grainy, backlit, and clunky, they paged slow, tired out your eyes, and were a pain, literally, to use.
Today's most recent Sony, the PRS-505, has much improved its performance. Earlier versions of its ereader were dim even with backlighting, and impossible to read for long stretches without eyestrain. In addition, previous versions had a problem with ghost pages and flickering; while the recent version has not perfected the answer to this problem, it is very, very good. The new PRS-505 has crisp black letters on near-white epaper (they call their technology eInk), and no backlighting; for most people, it's about as easy to read as a good-quality novel, though not quite to magazine level. Buttons down the right side make pagination and choosing from your library easy, and at only six inches wide, the size of an average novel, it's very comfortable in the hand.
The Kindle also has excellent readability, its epaper sharp and crisp but not harshly so. Some users have complained about the very wide buttons for pagination on either side, as they are easy to accidentally bump while reading, but it is easy to use. Thumbing through your library takes only a few seconds, and a small keyboard at the base of the screen even gives you good search capability.
Software, Storage, and Speed
The complaints about speed and ease of access that used to proliferate about all ereaders have been answered in both the Sony and Amazon product. You'll find pagination as quick as or quicker than turning the pages of a physical book. Storage, too, has been upgraded in both versions. The Sony PRS-505 has the capability of external storage in a standard USB device now, making it much easier to take as much library with you as you like.
The Kindle is just as fast, if not faster, but doesn't have the same storage expansion capability. Instead, its always-there connectivity can hook anytime to your account at Amazon, where all your purchased books are kept for download and redownload at any time. You can also transfer other books to your Kindle via USB from your computer, but you won't be able to store them at your account.
Power and Connectivity
Both the Sony PRS-505 and the Kindle have very good power use, with the Kindle having an edge; with your Internet connection turned off (not a problem while reading books offline), the charge in a Kindle can potentially last a couple of days of reading, while taking only a couple of hours to recharge.
The Kindle has a serious advantage in connectivity. To get books onto a PRS-505, you have to transfer files to a USB storage device and then to your eReader. The Kindle simply goes online anywhere there's Sprint cell phone service, and there you go – a bookstore in your pocket.
Price and Cost of Use
The Sony PRS-505 has a much more attractive price point than the Kindle; you can find it for less than $270. The Kindle, on the other hand, is more expensive: $399 at Amazon if you're lucky enough to find it in stock.
Books available for the Amazon Kindle are priced at $9.99 and below; for heavy readers, this takes out a lot of the pain of that initial higher price for Kindles. The Sony, on the other hand, charges about half the regular hardcover price for its eBooks, and the difference can add up over time.
Formats and Product Availability
A PRS-505 supports, according to their specs, .pdf, .txt, .jpg, and BBeB Book formats; users complain about having problems with seeing entire .pdfs without scrolling, so there are still some issues there.
The Kindle has a real edge, with its ability to access Amazon's huge library of etexts (88,000 books and growing), online periodicals, and even blogs. The Kindle can even surf the Web in general (with some limitations – no Flash support, for instance) and download free ebooks from all over the Internet. Kindle supports the proprietary .azw format, and also supports .txt, .mobi, and .prc formats easily. Amazon will convert Word, HTML, .txt, .jpg, .gif, .png, and .bmp formats for ten cents a document, sending them to your Kindle email, or for free if you have them sent to your own email address. While it does not support .pdf, you can convert these to Word with a free converter, which can then be converted to a Kindle format.
So in a head-to-head, assuming you have plenty of money – the Kindle is definitely the winner overall. For a less expensive but very good product, the Sony PRS-505 is still excellent.
