EBook Reader Review

Rob Sawyer doing reading from ereader (Photo: Peter Rainford)

As Read an E-Book Week continues, I thought I'd follow up a comment from yesterday's post with some links to ebook reader reviews.

One of the biggest challenges facing folks who are interested in reading ebooks on a dedicated ebook reading device related to the choices to make. There's certainly no shortage of devices available.

As I mentioned, I own two ebook readers (a Sony PSR-505 and an entourage eDGe) - they both have their advantages and disadvantages, both use e-ink screens -- ie, easier on the eyes than a backlit screen, require ambient light, just like a book, uses less battery power for the display) and are decent depending on what type of reading I'm doing.

For example, the Sony is good for places I'd normally read a paperback because it's far more portable and compact. The eDGe is better when I'm reading a book I want to annotate and write in the margins of, because it offers me the ability to actually write and save notes right in the text of the book. It also is a dual-book, running an e-ink screen on the left with an Android operating system with wifi capabilities and a whack of other bells and whistles on the right hand-side.

So they're both decent devices, yet I read most ebooks on the iPhone that I pretty much already carry around with me. It's just more convenient for me.

But I'd like to share a list of generic comparisons of devices - the first one is from Wikipedia and is a listing of the features of the various ebook devices out there. The nice thing about it is there is a lot of info about the devices that aren't "ads" for the devices by the manufacturers themselves, so you'll get a relatively unbiased POV.

There's another great and similar comparison done on the Mobileread wiki, with the matrix broken down by the size of the device.

And, of course, there's this great video from my friend, author Robert J. Sawyer who, back in February 2010, recorded a quick video summary of the various ebook reading devices he owns and has used over the years.



(Remember, this video was posted more than a year ago, so while there are a great many devices in Rob's excellent overview, it doesn't include newer devices that exist, and which Rob likely now owns. He's been reading on ebook devices for years, and when he does readings he usually reads from an ebook screen (as seen in the image accompanying this post, when he launched his novel Watch at Titles Bookstore at McMaster University last March.)