5 e-book readers for less than $175
NEW YORK — When Amazon.com’s groundbreaking Kindle e-book reader came out in 2007, it cost $399. Now, some e-readers, including the most recent Kindle entry, can be had for just north of $100.
At the price of five or so hardcover books, it’s close to impulse-buy territory for many people. And if you give in to your desires, what do you get? Our test of four e-readers priced from $114 to $164 finds that cheap, in most cases, means good value. All four have black-and-white screens that are about half the size of a paperback book. They can connect wirelessly to the Internet for e-book downloads.
I didn’t look closely at battery life, because with one exception, they all claim more than a month of use. The company time machine was occupied.
Here’s the rundown:
타 Kindle with Special Offers ($114) is the cheapest Kindle model yet. It’s indistinguishable from a device that costs $25 more, except that it shows advertising as its screen saver and at the foot of the menu.
You don’t, mercifully, see any advertising when you’re reading, and overall the ads didn’t feel intrusive. The selection was limited, for the most part, to Oil of Olay, Visa and a car company or two, making us wonder if advertising companies are really sold on Kindle ads.
타 The Barnes & Noble Nook ($139) is another small triumph from a bookseller whose first e-reader, the original Nook, was shockingly bad. Less than a year later, it redeemed itself with the release of the Nook Color. I still consider that the best dedicated e-reading device, but its $249 price tag places it out of the entry-level category.
The new monochrome Nook has a touch-sensitive screen, making for an easy, intuitive interface. It’s also small and light. In short, it’s a pleasure to use.
Like the Kindle, the Nook uses a screen with “electronic ink” technology. It makes for long battery life and very good legibility in bright light, where color screens look dim.
But it also comes with big drawbacks. It can’t show color and can’t be backlit for legibility in low light, and it takes time to switch between pages. The slow screen can also make the e-reader annoying to control, but the Nook makes the best of it by making the screen touch-sensitive.
타 Kobo eReader Touch Edition ($130) is quite similar to the Nook, but takes the touch interface one step further by eliminating page-turn buttons. That leaves only two buttons, for the home screen and for power. Style-wise, this makes it the iPhone of e-readers. It, too, is a pleasant experience, and it suppresses the “black flash” in the same way the Nook does.
타 Aluratek Libre Air ($130) is an odd duck in that it isn’t sold by a major bookstore (Kobo is affiliated with Borders) and it doesn’t use an e-ink screen. Instead, it has a reflective LCD screen, somewhat smaller, darker and greener than e-ink but more nimble and without ghosting problems. When I reviewed the Libre Pro a year and a half ago, I preferred its LCD screen over the e-ink readers available at the time. But e-ink screens have improved and the LCD has not, so my preference has shifted.
The screen is still passable, though. It uses more power than e-ink, so the Libre Air is only rated for two weeks of use.
I name the Nook and the Kobo eReader the winners of this test. I still think the iPad is better as an all-around e-reader because of its color screen, its backlighting and its size.