Got the following email from Bruce Wilson:
A short lab test in the July 2010 issue. I paraphrase and quote:
Opening line: “Amazon’s Kindle e-readers are still the best choice for most consumers.”
“In our comprehensive tests, the Kindle, $260, and its supersized sibling, the Kindle [DX], $490, had crisper, more readable type than any other e-reader in the Ratings and better than the iPad’s (see sidebar).”
The Ratings:
6- to 7-inch screens:
63 Kindle
60 Sony Reader Daily edition
56 Sony Reader Daily Touch
52 Nook
51 BeBook Neo
8- to 10-inch screen:
65 Kindle [DX]
49 iRex DR 800SG
For text readability, both Kindles are rated above average. All others are average. Only the Sony’s are rated above average for response time.
No reader was selected as being Recommended, or as a Best Buy.
The iPad sidebar says that the iPad wasn’t included in the ratings because it is a computer with a reader capability, not dedicated hardware. iPad Pros: fast page turns, “dazzling visual image” of the page turns, eye-catching color. Cons: type is less crisp than on the best dedicated e-readers, heavy, low battery life.
What’s the Sony Reader Daily Touch? 😉 Hope they tested the readers thoroughly
Where’s the Sony Pocket? You have it pictured, but it’s not on the list. It’s 1000% more readable than the Daily and Touch.
It may be a new player on the scene, but it has legs. It easily makes up for “missing features” with a great price point. If you want a dedicated reader, for reading, this works great. If you want a reader for purposes other than reading, well this won’t cut it.
Where’sKobo,
I think that people who buy Kobo for $100 less will regret it sooner than later when they see that every other e-reader maker offers SOME kind of wireless access to books and to other Net areas, as with the Nook’s WiFi or the Kindle’s 3G net-wide slow-access 24/7 that is not bad with mobile-device optimized sites and does not have an added cost.
As most know now, the iPad 3G model costs an additional $130 over the $500 model and using that access costs between $15-$30/month.
Add that you don’t have an in-line dictionary at the ready for the word your cursor is on nor the ability to do a simple Search in a book for a character name for prior mentions — which is the equivalent of ‘flipping’ pages to look for something.
Doing highlighting and adding notes is not as important to most but will be for student types of any age.
For $100 less it is actually quite a crippled e-reader relative to the Sony, Nook and Kindle’s more popular e-readers.
But if someone wants only to read w/o the features mentioned above AND wants the considerable upside of being able to borrow public library e-books offered by ‘Overdrive” then Kobo is a very good buy.