As technology continues to progress and eReaders begin to expand into new areas, the competition between the various competing brands has also heated up. The potential for eReaders to see broad use in the business and educational sectors with their ability to instantly update data and send it anywhere in the world, and the increased applications for personal use, such as newspaper and RSS feeds in addition to their capability to house a large library of books, play MP3 and other audio files, and much more, all serve to make their potential market expansion limitless.
There are four major contenders in this review vying for the crown right now, the Sony eReader, the iRex iLiad, the Amazon Kindle and the BEBOOK. Let's take a quick run through each device, highlighting some of their pros and cons.
Amazon Kindle
First up we'll look at the Kindle, the most well known of the eReaders in this review, also the current market leader and being available only in the US. The Kindle had a good deal of hype built up surrounding it's launch, and sales lived up to that hype, with publishers in particular often expressing surprise at well their products have done through the eReader.
The kindle is without a doubt the most unique looking of the various eReaders, and despite its popularity and the generally positive image most people have of the device, those same people freely admit that it's probably the ugliest of the eReaders, and also the one with the worst functionality, due to too many button, and the page buttons being too large in general, making it difficult to find a nice position for hands while reading that won't result in you accidentally hitting buttons. It also does not support native document types like PDF, but instead converts them into its own format, which often causes issues. Lastly, the machine is also unavailable for purchase in most parts of the world, another factor that jumps out at you when considering its early success.
What makes the Kindle so popular in the face of all of these seemingly deal breaking issues? Firstly is the large selection of books and newspapers available for the device, pretty much trumping the other devices quite soundly. This is probably the major factor working in its favour at the moment. It also has a large screen and nice scroll button that allows for selection of items within a document.
Sony Reader PRS 505
Second in our review is the Sony Reader PRS 505. This is Sony's second attempt at an eReader after their relatively unsuccessful first attempt. The Sony Reader first off is a much more attractive and mature looking device than the Kindle. The screen is slightly smaller than the Kindle's, but has the same high quality contrast through its E-Ink technology. There are multiple external slots including a Pro Duo slot, a virtual standard with many Sony devices. It also has a USB slot.
An advantage over the Kindle is its native support for files types like RTF and most notably PDF and Word files/text documents, as well as its own locked file type. It also displays picture types such as JPG, GIF and PNG, and allows MP3 playback.
The majority of the buttons are tiny, and located on the right side of the screen, rather than at the bottom of the device where a couple of thumbwheels now rest which are primarily used for page turning. This button layout is a mixed bag, and will probably come down to personal preference. It's not entirely intuitive, but the device is much easier and more naturally held than the Kindle, without fear of hitting any of the buttons.
Overall this is a solid device, but its proprietary DRM and lack of acceptance for other DRM's limits the amount of books available for it and obligates its user to buy only Sony books.
iRex iLiad
Third runner up in our ebook reader review is the iLiad. The iRex iliad has a nice sized screen with E-Ink technology and 16 shades of gray, more than the Kindle, Sony and BeBook reader. It also has the best contrast of any of the competing eReaders, making for a great image. This slightly improved picture quality does come at the cost of a much steeper price point though, as well as weakened battery life in comparison to the others.
Maybe due to the increased screen specs, the device also seems to operate slower than the others, with noticeable short pauses when turning pages, and a prevalent ghosting effect on the screen while doing so.
It comes ready to read many of the standard file types, though e-book format is clearly superior in its image quality. There are also a handful of external slots, including a SD slot. The iLiad also comes with a pen device than can be used to help edit documents or select options, similar to the Nintendo DS' stylus. Should you lose the pen though, you will not be able to access all of the iLiad's options, which could prove to be a major pain naturally.
BeBook eReader
One of the new contenders in our review is the BeBook ereader. This device is perhaps the most user-friendly of the bunch, with a nice button layout and overall design, and easily navigable menus. Numerous options can be easily customized to make the reading experience ideal for your tastes.
It has support for just about any file type you can imagine, including PDF, DOC, EPUB, PPT, TXT, HTML, RTF, BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, DJVU, FB2, WOL, CHM, RAR, ZIP, MP3 and even Microsoft LIT. It also features the longest battery life of any of the current models.
You have a SD slot, and a nice 512 MB of internal memory for storing books or documents. The screen is the same high quality E-Ink screen as the other models.
BeBook also supports Mobipocket DRM from August 2008, one of the most prolific e- book publisher formats in the world, so it promises to have plenty of titles available for it, in addition to standard e-books with no DRM. The BeBook is also available worldwide.
Conclusion
There are four strong contenders in our ebook reader review right now, each of which has its own strengths and weaknesses. Evaluating these traits against your own personal tastes should lead you to purchase the eReader best suited for you, with years of exceptional reading to follow.
