My First Review: Sony PSR 505

I think after having so many gadgets now, I should start testing my writing skill to review some of these gadgets. So, I have decided to review the latest gadget that I have -- Sony eBook Reader PSR 505. I am going to use my own categories for reviewing.


Look:
There is always no doubt in me that Sony's stuff is sleek and stylish. Therefore, it is not surprising that the owner of this commonly-known-geeky-hobby aka book reading gadget is proud to "present" this in the public (so am I). It is not heavy at all, feel very rigid and metallic (not like Amazon's*ahem*Kindle plastic-feel). The silver-ish colour certainly grant the gadget some futuristic feel. When I carry this in the shuttle bus going to work, my colleagues were all amazed with the design -- that proves its design certainly is welcomed by big audience. Oh, it comes with a leather-ish (I am not sure it is a real leather or not, but I doubt it would be real...) case giving the whole gadget more book-alike appearance. In fact I found out that with this book-alike case carrying while reading this gadget has become so much easier and intuitive. The size of the display is certainly justifiable - not too big to be too clumsy, or not too small to be too illegible. Also, one more thing Sony does right with this gadget is that finally they allow their own device to support other types of memory card. This time, they also add an SD card slot on the gadget in addition to their precious memory stick duo pro. So, overall, I am more than satisfied with the look, i.e., design.

Use:
I have read a lot of reviews about this gadget. Most of them share a common complaint, the buttons. Some said they are too hard to press, some even said they don't give any instant feedback that the button has been pressed (or not) - like a click sound. Honestly, I don't agree with them. The buttons are just OK, and the feedback is displayed at the bottom-right corner of the screen (if the function is not valid, it will flash a small icon). But, one thing I notice among my colleagues when they try my PSR 505 (in fact I myself also made the similar mistake) is that they all use their fingers to press the screen - they thought it has come with a touch-screen. I guess, the intuitiveness of the usage is still a bit of a lack. The display is great! E-ink technology is used here (which is why I bought this gadget also). Reading the book on the screen is certainly like reading a book. It doesn't hurt my eyes by staring at the screen for too long. And, one more advantage is that the responsiveness of the gadget when I turn a page is impressively fast. However, if one thing to complain, I would say when I want to zoom in/out of the book, the speed of responsiveness is drastically degraded because the gadget needs to reformat the whole ebook (considering the ebook has more than 500 pages). Sony has its own ebook client software, the so-called eBook Libary. I totally dislike it! In fact, I think it is entirely useless except if you want to make any purchase from the eBook Store. Luckily there is a free software called Calibre, which provides more than the official software - it could convert the ebook for you, allow you to edit the ebook metadata, to transfer to memory stick instead of the gadget itself etc.

Price:
Sony is also notorious with its price - ridiculously expensive. However, this time, somehow other brands beats Sony on price - Amazon Kindle costs about 400 USD, iRex iLiad costs about 600 USD, Hanlin V-series costs about 3000 RMB, etc. And, my Sony costs just above 2400 RMB! Of course you could argue that the former products' price come with some extra functions like WiFi, touch-screen, etc. But, considering I am only using this thing to read book, why do I need a WiFi (for Amazon Kindle the WiFi is merely used to shop wireless-ly on Amazon for books or to download some blogs).

Conclusions:
I am happy! Good: design, responsiveness to page turn, Calibre, price. Bad: responsiveness to zooming, and compared to Amazon, Sony eBook Store certainly has less ebook choices.