While many people have turned to their iPads and Android tablets for the purpose of reading e-books, there is still very much a market for the dedicated eReader. The e-ink display is so much easier on the eyes and the battery life is way better than what you’d get from a tablet. But, which one is best?

A quick comparison has been put together with some of the heaviest hitters in this space, taking a look at the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle, Kindle Keyboard, Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, Nook Simple Touch, and Kobo Glo. There are others to be considered, like those from Sony or other Kobos, but these are some of the most popular and their comparison should help narrow down your choices.

Display

All six of the eReaders featured in this overview use some form of e-ink technology for their displays rather than the regular backlit LCDs you find on tablets. You’ll also notice that they’ve all congregated on the 6-inch form factor, though you’ll find other variations from Amazon, B&N and Kobo that come in other sizes. The resolutions are mostly the same, though the Paperwhite and the Glo have significantly better PPIs. It’s also noteworthy that the Glo, Paperwhite and Nook with Glowlight are the ones with lit displays for dim reading situations.

Size and Weight

Since they all have six-inch displays, the overall dimensions of all these eReaders are roughly the same. They measure approximately 165 x 120 x 10mm with some variation and they all weigh right around 170-210 grams or so. The lone exception is the Kindle Keyboard, since it has that physical QWERTY keyboard beneath the display, stretching its length to 190mm and bumping its weight to 247g.

Storage Space

Not surprisingly, all six of the eReaders also have roughly the same amount of storage space. After all, e-books are very small files and you don’t need much space. The Paperwhite and Kindle both have 2GB, while the Kindle Keyboard has 4GB. The Nooks and Kobo Glo all have 2GB, plus a microSD expansion slot. That memory expansion could prove to be an important feature for people who want to carry a lot of content with them.

Wireless

They all have Wi-Fi, but you can opt to get the Kindle Paperwhite as a WiFi+3G mdel. The Kindle Keyboard is sold only as a WiFi+3G eReader.

Battery Life

The Kindle, Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, and Kobo Glo all have batteries rated in the 4 week range, while the Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Keyboard and Nook Simple Touch (sans GlowLight) last twice as long at about 8 weeks. Of course, your mileage will vary based on usage, especially when it comes to how much you use the lighting features. Charging any of these eReaders will take you 3 to 4.5 hours.

Other Considerations

If you want to read in dimly lit situations, you’ll want to opt for one of the eReaders that comes with some form of lit display. That’s the Kindle Paperwhite, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight or the Kobo Glo. If you want to take advantage of Amazon’s gigantic library, then you’ll want one of the Kindles. If you want a keyboard, then you’ll want to the Kindle Keyboard. Of course, there are some tradeoffs if you want, say, a keyboard and a backlight, because that just doesn’t exist.

Price

This will be a big deciding factor for many people. The cheapest of the bunch is the regular old Kindle that starts at $69, but you could also consider something like the Kobo Mini (5-inch) that starts at around the same price range. It is worth noting that all Kindles come with the “Special Offers” advertising that you’ll have to pay $20 to eliminate. If you hate ads, you’ll need to factor that into the price. It’s also debatable whether the Kindle Keyboard is really worth its premium just for a keyboard.

At the end of the day, which eReader you choose will really depend on several factors. Price is one, to be sure, but you’ll also want to think about size, backlighting, and the ecosystem. Whatever the case, it’s a good time to be a consumer, because we are offered a lot more choice than when the original Kindle was the be-all and end-all of e-book readers.

[Source]

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Some of you might remember how much hoopla Amazon played at their Kindle Fire presentation about how fast their wonderful, magic Silk browser is. Well, the circus left town for now, and folks who believed Amazon ended up getting something else instead of swift Silk. There’s a solid Silk browser test review published at Anandtech. In short, theoretical gains in speed for the Silk browser working with Amazon cloud servers can be severely diminished or even reverted by real life limitations of the Fire’s CPU, of  limits on number TCP/IP stack connections and corresponding bandwidth, and by RAM available for Silk operations on Fire. General advice is to not use the main Silk feature, namely “Accelerate Page Loading”, as it seems useless for the Fire at best, and even opposite results in most cases; slower Web page loading compared to “unaccelerated” mode.

The staff geek of Howtogeek website has compiled a simple set of simple measures that can make your Fire’s Silk feel silkier and speedier:

Open up the browser, hit the menu button at the bottom of the screen, hit the Settings button, and then find the following options:

• Enable plug-ins: off
• Accelerate page loading: Unchecked
• Desktop or mobile view: Mobile

You don’t have to change the browser into Mobile view, though we do recommend it. Just disabling Flash and the “accelerate page loading” made a big difference while browsing. You can also change the plug-ins to allow them on demand, but that usually ends up with a lot of annoying prompts, so it’s not usually worth it—it’s worth noting that YouTube still works just fine without the Flash plugin enabled.

What you see here as a result, is the Silk browser stripped of all its silk, so to speak. When in such a state, I bet it’s no different than the stock Android Webkit-based Gingerbread browser.

One thing is trying to improve the performance of the Silk browser, but its just mind blowing how attempting to “improve” it would cause a Fire user such grief that they would easily choose an alternative browser, like side-loaded Opera Mobile with its hardware accelerated Web page rendering.   More radical ways of accelerating Web browsing experiences for the Amazon Kindle Fire could be offered by flashing an Ice Cream Sandwich based custom ROMs on Fire, thus rooting it. That is, when these ROMs would be available for public consumption.

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Pronounced like “every,” Evri is an app that aggregates the various news sources from the around the Internet, as well as stuff happening in the social sphere. This way, you can check out what your friends are sharing on Twitter and Facebook, for example, as well as follow current trending topics and the like. It’s a “topic-based newsreader.”

I have to admit that the UI is pretty nice with the appearnace of stacked Polaroids for various topics. The early reviews look good too. You can get it via iTunes now.

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“We are excited to take this leap forward in our ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere,” wrote the director of Amazon’s Kindle division, Dorothy Nicholls, in a release.

“We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser.”

Users will find their library, complete with their highlights, bookmarks and notes, when they log in on the browser, the company says. And the store — boasting almost 1 million titles already — has been touch-optimized, meaning Safari on the iPad is good to go.

Other web browsers, such as IE and Firefox, will be compatible with the Cloud Reader soon, they say — likely just about as soon as the Amazon Tablet is released this October.

Along with their slew of apps for mobile and desktop systems, it seems Amazon wants Kindle to be the most available reader on the market.

“The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS,” reads the statement. “To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books.”

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, how long do you think it will be before other apps and readers make the move from app stores to URLs? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

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With this new service, you’ll have the ability to buy and read your books online, accessing your digital e-book collection not only on your computer’s browser, but also on mobile apps with Android and iOS, as well as eReader devices that support Adobe Digital Editions. The key is that your e-books are stored in the cloud and not locally. This provides you with unlimited storage, theoretically.

The other main selling point that Google is trying to push is that its eBookstore is open. They’re not forcing you into one device over another. “That means you can acess your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa — using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.”

That’s the bright side. The not so bright side is that you can’t download your DRM-free e-books from Google to read them on devices that don’t support Adobe Digital Editions. You know, like the Kindle.

[Google]

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What do you do when you’re still stuck playing second fiddle to the Kindle and the iPad is stealing your thunder? You release an updated version with more features, functions, and juicy specifications, of course! That seems to be the strategy behind the upcoming Nook Color, the official successor to the first Barnes & Noble Nook.

Details are remarkably sketchy at this point, but the rumor mill is pointing toward a new Nook that would feature a color touchscreen display, Android-based operating system, and a $249 starting price point. It would be called the Nook Color, appropriately enough, and it’s possible we’ll see it at the Nook event tomorrow afternoon.

For now, we get a glimpse of what appears to be an official product shot from an accessory page. This picture is for the Nook Color Screen Film Kit, which is basically a screen protector. We’re not as interested in the film, of course, but the Nook itself is starting to look like a tall iPad, don’t you think? They’ve done away with the dual-tech thing on the first Nook in favor of an all touchscreen interface.

I am wondering a bit about the hook in the bottom-left corner though. That could be just a design thing as part of the protective case, but what if it’s actually a part of the device itself?

SOURCE: CNET

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SigmaTek 7-inch eReader EBKT-101

France’s SigmaTek Computer will be launching a pair of eBook readers at IFA next month. The 5-inch and 7-inch eReaders both have TFT displays with a resolution of 800×480. Inside is a RockChip2808 CPU running 600MHz, nothing sensational and could pose a problem since this eReader is not meant for just eReading. Support for “multimedia” features include AVI, XviD, and MKV video, with MP3, WMA, FLAC, AAC, WAV, and OGG music. How this will handle HD movies remains to be seen, 720p would be expected as it only has 128MB of SDROM.

We’ve been informed that the OS will be “Rockchip OS”, however the specs of this eBook match those of others equipped with Android so that could be a possibility. There is no App store nor support for third party apps yet, so a jailbreak to Android seems possible. Software will be an iTunes like utility for managing your music, photos, videos and books purchased from an “internet website.” That’s great, it means it will be open for you to grab EPUB, PDF and TXT files from anywhere you choose.

They will be in stores this October, for 119 euros and 99 euros for the 7-inch and 5-inch models respectively.

SigmaTek 5-inch eReader EBKT-51

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Not surprisingly, the Japanese company is staying mostly mum about the details thus far, but it seems that the yet-unnamed Sharp e-reader will indeed boast a color LCD instead of an e-ink based display. But that’s not the best part.

It mostly likely won’t be able to do it at launch, but it appears that the upcoming Sharp tablet e-reader has the “potential for 3D down the line.” Sharp President Mikio Katayama is already really enthusiastic about 3D, so this kind of added functionality makes sense.

The third dimension probably isn’t all that useful for reading through the New York Times, but it could make for a great gaming experience and maybe even some interesting 3D comic books. Or 3D movies even. The current timeline calls for a Japanese release this fall with a US launch by the end of the year.

Sharp 3D Tablet‎ or E-Reader to Launch this Year [TechPinger]

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Huawei T62W touchscreen eReader running Android?

Little is yet known about the Huawei T62W ereader, including screen resolution and what type of e-book formats it will support.  The operating system also remains a mystery although it’s rumored to be the Android OS.  What we do know is that it comes with a 6-inch white-on-gray screen that is sensitive to the touch.  This is a nice deviation from the space-hogging Kindle keyboard and no-touch.   Other expected features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G connectivity, microSDHC and SIM card slots.

Huawei T62W e-reader clears FCC – touchscreen, Wifi, 3G [The Digital Reader]
Huawei T62W eReader Sails Through FCC with Touchscreen, WiFi, and 3G in Tow [SlashGear]

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Amazon's new Kindle DX

Amazon is shipping a new Kindle eReader this week to keep things fresh and interesting in the eBook market, their latest iteration is the Kindle DX.  The DX offers new e-ink display technology with 50% better contrast over its predecessor, making for clearer, sharper text and images.  The 9.7 inch screen shows 1200 x 824 resolution, with 16-levels of grayscale and 10:1 contrast ratio; manufactured by E Ink Corporation . The upgraded e-ink display will make it easier to read whether you are sitting indoors under low light, or outside in direct sunlight.

Whispersync technology has been integrated to automatically save and synchronize your book libraries and last page read.  You can also download new content in less then 60 seconds over wireless.  Battery life is rated for up to two weeks with wireless turned off, or half that with wireless on.
Shipping with an internal HSDPA modem (backup EDGE/GPRS in deadzone areas) and free 3G wireless connectivity in over 100 countries, the Kindle DX enclosed in graphite with 4GB of internal memory, online backup storage, and access to over 620,000 ebooks, newspapers, magazines and blogs, plus a million or so copyright books, sells for US $379 and ships this Wednesday.

[Amazon]

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