E-readers: Which is Which?

A burgeoning trend in the reading world seems to be electronic books, and the portable devices used to read them, e-readers.  E-readers are incredibly popular items on Christmas wish lists for 2011 and their sales are up from approximately 8% of Americans a year ago, to nearly 15%, according to Harris Interactive.

Although e-readers seem to be the way of the future for those who enjoy a good book, their features and specifications, and how to use them, aren’t necessarily the easiest to understand.

The most popular question about e-readers that is fielded in the computer lab is Which e-reader should I get? Although we have our personal favourites here in the lab, our goal is not to promote one e-reader over the other, but to provide our readers with enough information to make an educated decision about which e-reader would suit them best.  The following chart will provide you with basic information about our top e-reader choices:

	Kobo Touch	Kobo Vox	Sony Reader WiFi	Barnes & Noble NOOKcolour
Price	$139.99	$199	$169.99	$199
Dimensions	114mm x 165mm (4.5” x 6.5”) 10mm (0.4”) deep 185g (6.5oz)	192.4mm x 128.4mm (7.57” x 5.06”) 10mm (0.4”) deep 402.6g (14.2oz.)	175 mm x 111mm (6.9” x 4.4”) 9.5mm (~0.4”) deep 167g (5.9oz)	206mm x 127mm (8.1” x 5”) 12.2mm (0.48”) deep 447.9g (15.8oz)
Supported Ebook Formats	ePUB, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF, TXT, HTML, RTF, CBZ and CBR	ePUB, JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP MP3, AAC, .3gp, mp4, m4a, flac, ogg, wav, mid, webm Can download an App to read PDF	ePUB, PDF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, MP3, AAC, TXT	ePUB, PDF, CBZ, XLS, DOC, PPT, TXT, DOCM, XLSM, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX, MP3, MP4, AAC, ADOBE FLASH, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Wi-Fi	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Touch Screen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Screen Type	6” eInk Pearl	7” FFS+ Multimedia Display	6” eInk Pearl	7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen
Fonts	7 Font Styles, 17 Available Sizes (Dependent upon file type)	7 Font Styles, 42 Available Sizes (Dependent upon file type)	8 Available Sizes (Dependent upon file type)	6 Font Styles, 8 Available Sizes (Dependent upon file type)
Memory	Over 1,000 books on 2GB of memory Memory expandable with an SD card up to 32GB	Up to 5,000 books on 8GB of memory Memory expandable with an SD card up to 32GB	Up to 1,200 books on 2GB of memory Memory expandable with a micro SD card up to 32GB	Up to 5,000 books on 8GB of memory - 5GB reserved for Barnes and Noble content only Memory expandable with a micro SD card up to 32GB
Battery Life (dependant upon use)	1 month	7 hours with wi-fi off	over 1 month with wi-fi off	8 hours with wi-fi off
Library compatible	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Other Perks	Reading Life: tracks your reading stats and awards “trophies” for certain accomplish- ments Kobo Book Club: Awards Kobo users 1 free book per month (sign-up before March 31, 2012)	Web Browsing, Email, Address Book and Calendar Music and Video enabled Android Apps: Over 15,000 free apps available to download and install on your Vox Reading Life: tracks your reading stats and awards “trophies” for certain accomplish- ments	Built In Native Library App: allows the user to access the program used by their public library to borrow e-books	Web Browsing and Email Music and Video enabled Nook Apps: Thousands of Nook Apps available to download and install on your Nook

The reason that we have not included any Amazon Kindle products in our comparison is that, as of now, you cannot borrow any library items in Canada.  You are also only able to purchase 1 Kindle model in Canada.

The biggest question that someone wishing to purchase an e-reader needs to ask themselves is are you intending to use your e-reader to READ or do you want to be able to perform multiple tasks as well as read books?  If you’re looking for a device that will simply allow you to read e-books in good quality, then you want to look towards getting a more simple version of an e-reader, like the Kobo Touch.  However, if you want to be able to use your device to check your email, go on Facebook, play videos and games, AND read books, then perhaps you want to look towards getting one of the newer e-readers, like the Kobo Vox or Barnes and Noble NOOKcolor.  Finally, if you want a device that will perform most of the functions that your computer will, but is more portable and can also read books, perhaps you want to invest in a tablet like the iPad or Blackberry Playbook.

For more information about how to use an e-reader and the functions available, please see our blog post entitled I’ve Got My E-reader... Now what?

And if you’ve decided that maybe the tablet is the best route for you, please check out our blog post Give The Gift of E-Reading for more information!