Look at this thing, it slaps. So many buttons! So many books! Such a good daylight-visible screen! So much nothing else!

This lovely lad is a Sony PRS-505 from 2007 and it pisses all over reading on your phone. It cost like $300 in 2007 (half a grand in today's money) and you can feel the let's-make-this-feel-expensive Premium Device For Rich People quality when you touch it.

A few years ago you could find these things by the bucketload on ebay for like a tenner a pop, but now that new ereaders are plastic and don't have buttons, these are starting to get more expensive.

I bought a job lot of eleven ex-display-models off eBay for fifty bucks in late 2024. Here's a Mastodon thread on replacing the battery (click on the date when it seems to end, Mastodon's threading is still broken in 2025 booo) which will have to do until I get around to writing it up here on this site.

Modern ebook files are massive because they're filled up with bullshit that tends to choke vintage ereaders, so here's a guide on how to get books onto this thing.

If you also bought a display model, here's how to get it out of demo mode and onto proper firmware.