There are a myriad of devices that are geared towards reading ebooks and they offer vastly different experiences. The smartphone is always with us and in our pockets, it makes it easier to catch up with the latest news and some people like reading novels on it too. Tablets offer a much larger screen to read digital magazines, manga, newspapers and books, animations often look real pretty. The e-Reader is also popular because it is easy on the eyes and geared towards a singular purpose and nixes many of the distractions of social media and email notifications to break immersion.
Phones these days have gotten much larger than the 3 or 4 inch screens of the past. Most flagship Android and iPhones are much bigger and have slowly gotten rid of the bezel to provide more real estate for all of your digital content. Many people have a phone on them at all times to stay in the loop. Phones are really good for short or serialized fiction or reading the news.
There are basically two sorts of tablets these days, the bottom of the barrel ones like the Fire 7 or Nook Tablet that do not have great hardware, but they compete on price alone. The other category is the iPads and Microsoft Surfaces of the word. They cost more, but provide more hardware versatility and customization. The new iPads that were announced last week have 1TB of storage, which is completely massive. One of the big advantages of tablets in general is that the screens are much larger than an e-reader or a phone. They can store a copious amount of PDF files and personal documentation and some of them have stylus compatibility for highlighting and annotations. Reading ebooks on a large tablet screen is also a solid experience, but most companies tend to focus on smartphones, so the amount of tablet optimized apps pale in comparison.
E-Readers these days come in all shapes and sizes. Gone are the days where a six inch screen was your only option. Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Onyx, Boyue and dozens of other brands continue to innovate and rely exclusively on the E Ink experience, which is the closest you can get to real paper on a screen.
Some e-readers have audio functionality so you can buy and listen to audiobooks with a 3.5mm headphone jack or speaker. Others feature giant 9.7 to 13.3 inch screens and focus on the digital note taking aspect. Android is a big draw these days too. Of course, Amazon and Kobo continue to dominate the e-reader world and make it really easy to purchase manga and ebooks.
What is your favorite device to read ebooks on?
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
