If you enjoy reading as much as I do, you might find beneficial to obtain an electronic reader device. Nowadays most book stores provide a big collection of books in electronic format. So an avid reader like me would find themselves with a huge amount of choices starting from what book format to read, what book store to buy it from, all the way to what device to purchase. Such choices could make you want to go back to paperback.
I recently decided to purchase an electronic device recently because the amount of books in my book case is getting out of hand. I find that if I could replace all my book titles to electronic format, I could fit it all in a single computer. Thus eliminating a whole wall in my house dedicated to books. But upon making this decision I found myself with all the questions that anyone of you have reached.
So I decided to do a little research and selected a couple of devices which I feel fit my needs the most. Within those devices selected I have chosen Amazon’s Kindle $259, Barnes & Noble’s nook $259 and Sony’s Reader Touch Edition PRS600 $299.
One of the first differences I found is that the only device that was not available now was the nook. Barnes & Nobles’ website says that if you pre-purchase it now, it will be ship on January 4th 2010. The Amazon’s Kindle is available to purchase from the Amazon’s website. And the Sony Reader Touch is available from most US stores.
These three devices all have 6 inch monitors even though their dimensions are slightly different. Sony Reader Touch is 6.9” x 4.5” x 0.4”. Barnes & Nobles’ nook is 7.7” x 4.9” x 0.5”. And Amazon’s Kindle is 8” x 5.3” x 0.36” making this the biggest device out of the three listed.
As far as weight, Sony Reader Touch and Amazon’s Kindle are very close. Amazon’s Kindle weights 10.2 ounces while Sony Reader Touch weights 10.1 ounces. Barnes & Nobles’ nook at 11.2 ounces was the heaviest device out of these three.
Looking at storage, Sony Reader Touch has only 512MB of internal storage making this device the one with the smallest capacity. But the fact that it takes Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo™ and SD Card™ up to 16GB could help make this device as big if not bigger in memory storage than the other devices (except Barnes & Nobles’ nook). Barnes & Nobles’ nook haves an internal capacity of 2 Gigs and since it takes a microSD card up to 16 Gigs, this could be the biggest capacity in all the devices here mention. Amazon’s Kindle has a non-expandable 2 Gigs of internal memory.
The battery life in the three devices is 2 weeks without the wireless option turn on. The only difference you will find is in the changing time with Amazon’s Kindle been 4 hours and Barnes & Nobles’ nook been 3.5 hours. I was not able to find information the Sony Reader Touch.
As far as network capability I found that even though Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Nobles’ nook both have 3G capabilities only Barnes & Nobles’ nook is Wi-Fi enable.
Another difference I found was in the book formats that the three devices support. Sony Reader Touch is one of the most open devices I found taking EPUB, BBeB, PDF, Text, RTF, Word documents, MP3 and AAC. Amazon’s Kindle Supports AZW, PDF, TXT, Audible, MP3, MOBI and PRC without conversion. HTML DOC, RFT, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP would be supported in the Amazon’s Kindle but with conversion. Amazon provides and application you could use to convert this formats to a format that the Amazon’s Kindle can use. Finally, Barnes & Nobles’ nook takes EPUB, PDF, MP3 and PDB. PDB (ereader.com format) is the only format that is not supported by either Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader Touch.
Upon opening the box the Sony Reader Touch contains only the USB cables. Barnes & Nobles’ nook contains MicroUSB 2.0 cable, AC adapter and a rechargeable battery. While Amazon’s Kindle contains a power adapter, USB cable 2.0 and a rechargeable battery.
All devices have a 1 year manufacturer’s warranty with an option to purchase a 2 year at the time of purchase.
I hope this has helped you in the subject. Please comment on this article and let me know.
