Kindle and Nook E-readers

The Amazon Kindle still tops reviews

Amazon revamped its Kindle lineup in September 2011. In addition to upgrading the existing Kindle, which is now named the Kindle Keyboard (*Est. $100 and up) or Kindle Keyboard with Special Offers (*Est. $100), available models now include the redesigned Amazon Kindle (*Est. $80 and up) , also available as the Amazon Kindle with Special Offers (*Est. $80); the Wi-Fi-only, touch-screen Kindle Touch (*Est. $100 and up) and Kindle Touch with Special Offers (*Est. $100); the Wi-FI plus 3G Kindle Touch 3G (*Est. $190) and Kindle Touch 3G with special offers (*Est. $150 and up) ; and the Kindle Fire (*Est. $200) , a tablet computer that has garnered considerable attention as the first sub-$200 tablet PC from a major vendor. You'll find the Kindle Fire covered more extensively in our report on tablet computers.

If you want to save a little bit of money and don't mind being subjected to the occasional advertisement, every one of this generation's Kindles comes in two versions: the standard, ad-free model and "With Special Offers" model, which includes ads on the bottom of the home-screen and as a screen saver in exchange for a $30 to $40 price reduction. The offers do not appear during actual reading. Critics say the ads aren't as obtrusive as they expected, and that they actually are deals as opposed to simple advertisements. Users can edit their advertising preferences to see more or less of particular types of offers, or remove the ads entirely by paying Amazon the $30 or $40 difference in price between the standard and Special Offers versions of that particular model.

While the last-generation Amazon Kindle still sits well above its e-book reader rivals in many critics' lists, reviews of the newest versions show that experts largely hold them in the same high regard. Compared with the old Kindle -- and its closest competitor, the Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch (*Est. $100) -- reviews say the latest Kindle has a lighter, slimmer body, faster operation, a better battery and a lower price.

Critics say the low sticker price of the base Kindle should attract new readers who didn't want to spend $140 on the previous model, especially since it features the same basic functionality of the more expensive models. Kindle sells online at Amazon.com as well as at retailers such as Best Buy (which also sells the Nook) and Target, so you can try before you buy.

The base Kindle e-book reader is about the size of a paperback -- 6.5 inches by 4.5 inches -- but slimmer and lighter. At less than a third of an inch thick, it's noticeably slimmer than the half-inch-thick Nook Simple Touch, and it's a bit lighter, too (6 ounces versus 7.48 ounces). Both have 6-inch E Ink screens that reviews say really do look like black-and-white printed paper, but the Kindle's shows better sharpness and contrast in tests, and users say it's easier to read in mediocre light (you'll need a separate book light to read in the dark, though, with any E Ink reader). Both the Kindle Keyboard and the Kindle Touch are slightly larger and heavier than the base model.

In order to get the price point under $100, Amazon needed to make some sacrifices to the base Kindle's design versus its predecessor. The base version has less memory -- and thus e-book storage space -- than other Kindle models, lacks a memory card slot, offers no audio support and ditches a physical keyboard in favor of an onscreen virtual one. Since the Kindle also lacks a touch screen, users need to navigate the virtual keyboard using the small five-way controller at the base of the e-reader, which reviewers call tedious -- at best. "Typing is t-o-r-t-u-r-e," Michael Calore writes at Wired. "Thankfully, you won't need to do this very often." Turning pages is accomplished with dedicated forward and backward buttons, which experts say work well enough, but could be larger.

The interfaces on the other Kindles don't suffer from the same typing woes. The Kindle Touch also uses an onscreen keyboard, but the addition of a touch-based interface makes use much easier, experts say in early reviews. "Again, it's still imperfect, but there's a bit less of that incredibly frustrating lag we've seen with other devices," Brian Heater writes at Engadget.com. Page flipping is also handled via touch; touching an invisible one-inch strip on the left side of the screen flips backwards, while touching anywhere else on the screen advances the story. The Kindle Touch also supports pinch-to-zoom for small, hard-to-read web pages.

Meanwhile, the Kindle Keyboard, as its name implies, has a physical QWERTY keyboard that makes typing a breeze. However, it lacks the touch screen interface of the Kindle Touch.

The base Kindle can hold about 1,400 books in its 2 GB of available memory (the Nook also has 2 GB built in, but you can expand that with microSD cards). The step-up Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch models double that to 4 GB.

You can download books wirelessly via Wi-Fi, and Kindles can access AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots for free. While the base Kindle is Wi-Fi-only, the Kindle Touch 3G (*Est. $190) and Kindle Touch 3G with Special Offers (*Est. $150), and the Kindle Keyboard 3G (*Est. $140 and up) or Kindle Keyboard 3G with Special Offers (*Est. $150 and up) can all download via both Wi-Fi and free AT&T 3G wireless nationwide, with 3G coverage in more than 100 other countries. This makes the step-up Kindle e-readers a great choice for international travelers who want to download e-books wirelessly wherever they go. Experts say that while 3G is a plus, Wi-Fi works faster -- Laptop Magazine downloaded "Warchild" by Karin Lowachee in in just two seconds -- but similarly sized books took only about 15 seconds over 3G.

While the Kindle still won't read books in the widely used ePub format, Amazon has teamed up with more than 11,000 U.S. libraries to enable e-book lending. The Kindle will also read PDFs and other file types if you transfer them to the device via email or a micro USB connection, but email transfers are limited to files under 50 KB in size. In addition, users have more than 800,000 titles to choose from in Amazon's huge, easy-to-browse e-bookstore, including almost all of the latest New York Times bestsellers. Amazon.com says the vast majority of these cost $10 or less. You can also purchase and subscribe to a large number of periodicals and newspapers. Amazon Prime members can "borrow" one book per month from the site's "Lending Library," though a limited number of publishers are participating in that program at this time. For those who want to read books only available in the ePub format, you can use a third-party program such as Calibre (free, but donations are welcomed) to convert the file to PDF or MOBI files, which the Kindle can read.

Amazon says the Kindle's battery can last for three weeks with the wireless on, or up to a month with it off. Professional tests don't often take 10 days, let alone a whole month, but reviewers agree that the Kindle's charge lasts a long, long time. "After two full days of use with wireless on we had run through about a sixth of the battery," Laptop Magazine says. The charge loss would likely have been even less with wireless off. The publication also reports on the Kindle Keyboard 3G's battery life over cellular connections. "With 3G on and an hour of use for three days, we noticed a loss of about one-eighth the battery life."

The Kindle e-reader does have its flaws, critics say. All versions of the Kindle e-book readers include a basic web browser, but experts say it's a bit clunky and they wouldn't use it for much. The lack of a memory card slot also irks some.

In theory, text-to-speech capabilities found in the Kindle Keyboard and Kindle Touch allow Amazon Kindle users to treat their e-books as audio books, but professional testers say that the 2010 model's robotic voice mispronounces words -- it "still can't pronounce Kindle properly," says PC Pro. Unfortunately, reviewers have yet to say whether or not this year's version is improved, although they note that it still has the same mechanical tone. Those Kindles can, however, read MP3s and Audible audiobooks (it has stereo speakers and a headphone jack).

Any complaints aside, experts agree that the Amazon Kindle in its various iterations is still the e-reader to beat, although Engadget.com's Brian Heater doesn't think people who already have e-book readers should necessarily trade in their current models for the Kindle Touch. "There's nothing here that would make us want to dump our Nook, Sony WiFi reader, Kobo or even Kindle Keyboard," he writes. "The Kindle Touch is as good as any touch reader out there, but there's nothing particularly exceptional about it -- including pricing."

Barnes & Noble Nook e-readers also impress

Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble is also casting its hat into the tablet arena with the recently announced 7-inch Nook Tablet (*Est. $250) , which is designed to compete with the Kindle Fire, with slightly beefier specs and a slightly higher price tag. It's being promoted more as an all-around media machine rather than a dedicated e-reader. You can find the Nook Tablet covered in our report on tablet computers.

First and foremost, the Barnes & Noble Nook Color (*Est. $170) is a fully fledged e-book reader. However, it is also an Android device with a 7-inch backlit color touch screen, built-in Wi-Fi and a decent web browser that also plays video, including Flash video.

The Nook Color offers easy access to Barnes & Noble's vast two million-plus title e-book store (plus the ability to read PDFs, Microsoft Word files and the ePub books commonly found at public libraries and other e-book sources) and crisp type that reviews say is more readable than an iPad 2's (though the new Apple iPad has a high-resolution Retina display that's drawing raves for its ability to render text), but not as easy on the eyes as the non-backlit, paper-like E Ink screen of the Kindle or the Nook Simple Touch (covered below). You can turn pages by tapping the edges or swiping a finger across the screen.

Critics like the Nook Color. "Bottom line: We think you'll be satisfied with this tweener," says K. T. Bradford at Laptop Magazine. By the end of the day it was released, the Nook Color had scooped up a PCMag.com Editors' Choice award, Gizmodo.com's Seal of Approval and a spot on CNET's list of best e-book readers.

The Nook Color does make compromises, however. Unlike the Kindle Keyboard or Kindle Touch, there's no 3G wireless capability. The touch screen suffers from glare in bright sunlight, whereas an E Ink screen does not. At eight hours per charge, the Nook Color can hardly compete with the month-per-charge Kindle when it comes to battery life.

It's also not a "poor man's iPad," CNET's David Carnoy says (though be sure to see our report on tablet computers to see if the Nook Tablet can fill that bill). "With all its apps, the iPad simply offers much more functionality," Carnoy adds. However, the Nook has access to a curated app store with thousands of apps, though not the main Android Market so it can't run the full gamut of available Android apps. An update has brought many of the Nook Tablet's improvements to the Nook Color as well, including a new interface and access to some streaming media apps, including Netflix.

The most basic e-book reader in the Nook family -- the Nook Simple Touch (*Est. $100) , formerly known simply as the Nook -- draws very favorable reviews is priced similarly to the Kindle Touch. However, while each touch-based e-reader can be had for $100, the Nook Simple Touch doesn't include advertisements. Upgrading to an ad-free version of the Kindle Touch costs $140.

Reviewers find a lot to like in the Nook Simple Touch, including its two-month-rated battery life, smooth and easy-to-use touch screen interface, and its slight, unobtrusive physical design, which feels ergonomic despite being larger and heavier than the Kindle. The newly redesigned interface is also much improved, critics note. "The Simple Touch feels like it was designed to stay out of your way," Adrian Convert writes at Gizmodo.com. While it keeps the Nook Color's ePub support, it doesn't include audio or a web browser. Convert also says the IR ring touch screen technology isn't entirely accurate and makes highlighting text a chore. There isn't a 3G version available, either.

Despite being less than six months old at the time, the Nook Simple Touch received a software update in November 2011 that Engadget.com's Brian Heater says improves clarity and page refresh rates. That should help improve one issue critics have with the Nook Simple Touch: while experts say the Pearl E Ink technology is very good compared to most other e-book readers, they also say the Kindle's E Ink display slightly nudges out the Nook's. Heater, however, has reviewed the Kindle Touch Nook Simple Touch's recent update and says that both are "crisp and easy on the eyes." In addition, he reports that the Simple Touch's new software makes that device's page flipping rate superior to the Kindle Touch's. Barnes & Noble also claims that the update should roughly double the Nook Simple Touch's battery life.

If you want a touch screen interface and can tolerate the missing 3G, web browsing and audio features, critics say the Simple Touch is your best bet. "It's inexpensive, provides a fantastic reading experience, lasts an insanely long time, and accesses the giant Barnes & Noble library," PCMag.com reviewer David Pierce writes. Reviewers at Engadget.com and PCMag.com who got their hands on review models of the Kindle Touch both say they prefer the Nook Simple Touch for its lack of ads and speedy page flipping.

Kobo and Sony e-readers stumble in the details

Sony has condensed its e-book reader line down to a single model: the Wi-Fi-enabled Sony Reader PRS-T1 (*Est. $130) . Though some experts consider it to be overpriced or complain about missing features, some positives are cited. Like the Kindle Touch and Nook Simple Touch, Sony's E Ink screen is touch-sensitive, and experts say it is responsive and just as easy to read as a Kindle. Critics appreciate that it's small and light. Sony also reads ePub files, so you can download books from a wide variety of e-bookstores and public libraries. However, while they also say that Sony's Reader Store boasts a large selection of titles, it is slow to load and comes off as significantly less polished than the Amazon and Barnes & Noble ecosystems. "The Reader Store always gives the impression that it's about to crash," Jamie Lendino writes at PCMag.com.

All-in-all, while the Sony Reader PRS-T1 earns high marks as a smooth and functional piece of hardware, critics say there really isn't any reason to buy one over the Nook Simple Touch or an Amazon Kindle. "The Sony bookstore isn't as extensive as Amazon.com's, and the Sony Reader app isn't currently available on the iPhone and iPad," says CNET's David Conroy.

The Kobo Touch eReader (*Est. $100 and up) is another touch-screen-enabled e-book reader that earns some positive reviews. While it gets good enough feedback from many major sources -- including PC World, CNET, PCMag.com and Engadget.com – they all say that, quite frankly, it simply isn't as good as the Nook Simple Touch -- and that was before the Nook Simple Touch's price reduction, which made it as cheap or cheaper than the Kobo Touch. The Kobo Touch eReader interface is slower and not quite as polished, lacks page-turning buttons and lending features, and the initial setup requires a computer connection. Like the Nook Simple Touch, there's no audio support.

Despite the drawbacks, experts say the Kobo Touch eReader is a well-designed e-book reader in its own right. On the plus side, it includes a web browser, an E Ink screen, built-in Wi-Fi and a memory card slot. Reviewers also say it has a good battery life and is small enough to slip into your pocket. "Though the Kobo eReader Touch Edition doesn't quite measure up to the Nook Touch or the Kindle, it's a respectable and affordable touch screen e-reader with a lot of pluses," CNET's David Carnoy says.