Ebook reader holiday roundup
With the holiday season in full swing I thought it might be a good idea to give a quick overview of some of the most popular ebook readers on the market. I’ve included some important specs and the price of each unit.
Barnes & Noble Nook: The demand for the newest reader on the block has exceeded all expectations. If you’re looking to pre-order your Nook and wanting it before the Christmas, you can forget it. As of this writing all pre-orders for Nook will be shipping January 4, 2010. If you ordered earlier, you should still have yours in time for Christmas.
Here are some specs for Nook:
- 6″ diagonal e-ink display
- 1500 book storage capacity (up to 17,000 with expandable memory)
- AT&T wireless and WiFi
- Battery life 10 days with wireless on, 14 days with wireless on
- Over 1 million titles available, including 500,000 free titles
- Formats supported Epub, PDB, PDF, MP3.
Cost: $259
Amazon Kindle: As of this writing there are plenty of Kindles to go around. You can even pay for express shipping and get yours within days. This applies to the latest model, including the Kindle DX. Here are some specs:
- 6″ diagonal e-ink display
- 1500 book storage capacity
- Global wireless
- Battery life 4 days with wireless on, 14 days with wireless off
- Over 360,000 ebooks available from Amazon’s Kindle store
- Formats supported Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion (copied directly from Amazon site).
Cost: $259
Sony PRS-900BC Daily Edition: This is Sony’s newest member to their family of ebook readers. The other two are the Pocket Edition and Touch Edition. The Daily Edition is available for pre-order, and unit will ship December 18 through January 4 (cannot guarantee delivery for Christmas). Here are the specs:
- 7″ e-ink display
- 3G and WiFi wireless
- Battery life 7 days with wireless on, 2 1/2 weeks with wireless off
- Formats supported Adobe® PDF3 , Microsoft® Word, BBeB® Book and other text file formats, as well as EPUB/ACS4 and connection with Adobe Digital Editions.
- Landscape/Portrait display
Cost: $399
Obviously there are more specs than what I included here. Check the respective websites for more information about each reader. But don’t just limit yourself to these ‘big 3′. There are a lot of other options out there, with more coming on the market all the time. You can see the other readers and their features on this website I found.
Do your research and find a reader you will be comfortable reading. Also, buy one that you can afford so you have enough money left over to fill your new reader with lots of ebooks.
Related posts
- Part 2: Ebook reader holiday roundup (7 items to consider when buying an e-reader)
- Libre eBook Reader and Kobo eReader coming July 2 to a Borders near you
- Why the iPad isn’t the ideal e-reader
- Amazon nixes pdf and Microsoft formats from ebook offerings
- Do most people really care about ebook DRM?
Read More: Technology, eBooks
