Top 5 e-Book Readers of 2012

People loved reading long before books were published. With the rapid technological evolution, now reading has become comprehensive and easier than ever, especially with the breakthrough of the Internet. The latest additions to the literary curve were the e-book readers, providing users with a novel experience of enjoying a library of books from a single device at their own ease.

The market is saturated with various types of e-book readers; however the following is a filtered and structured presentation of the best e-book readers found on the market as of 2012.A noteworthy feature here is that Amazon dominating the business, with high quality e-book readers and the kindle store filled with millions of titles, audio books, text books, magazines, newspapers and anything you’d ever want to read.

Amazon Kindle Fire HD

Kindle Fire HD goes beyond the regular e-book readers, providing the users with an ultimate tablet-experience, for a surprisingly low price. Replacing the regular e-ink display, this slate packs a high resolution LCD screen, providing you the ability to watch HD movies, and play superior games, besides reading books. The 1.2 GHz dual core processor makes sure you get a seamless experience with this new advanced reader.

With the unrestricted access to Amazon collections, you can download any book, magazine or newspaper at anytime of the day. Kindle store contains over 1.2 million titles, which includes popular magazines like National Geographic, ESPN. Kindle Fire HD provides you the ultimate freedom to choose from over 100, 000 audio-books presented by Audible, simulating a superior Library-experience.

Leaping ahead of the competitors Kindle Fire HD provides you the opportunity to download movies, TV shows, Songs etc. and the best thing is that you get unlimited cloud storage for absolutely free, for all the content you download from Amazon. So you don’t have to worry about memory limitations at all. With Amazon prime, you can select from nearly 200,000 titles from the lending library, for free. Most encouragingly, there are no due dates to return the books, which include New-York Times bestsellers. Amazon prime also provides a free video streaming service, called Amazon prime instant video, of thousands of popular TV shows and movies for free, without advertisements.

Kindle Paperwhite

The built-in light to illuminate the screen is what makes the Kindle Paperwhite pop from the rest of the competitors providing e-book slates under $115.Unlike a normal back-lit display Kindle Paperwhite pours light into the screen without directing light beams at the readers eye, giving a comprehensive reading experience. That being said Kindle Paperwhite is essentially not a regular e-book reader, for it has the guts to challenge the rivals for a fierce competition.

The resolution has been tweaked, and provides sharper and crisper texts than regular e-book readers. The glare reduction is available unsurprisingly, giving you the ability to read even under direct sunlight. You can adjust the font sizes and styles to match your personal flavor. Another cool feature found here is the new “stop-watch” like thing called “Time –To Read”, which measures your reading speed to give you an approximation of when you’ll finish the chapter. On the hardware side, the battery compartment too does an amazing job, holding the charge up to several weeks even when the built-in light is turned on.

What’s truly amazing about the Amazon e-book readers is their exposure to millions of titles found on Amazon kindle department. Kindle Paperwhite is not an exception to this. While you can shop for thousands of kindle books and magazines under $10, you can also access Kindle Owners lending library to get free kindle-titles, with absolutely no-due dates. If these aren’t enough, you can burrow e-books from your public library or find thousands of free titles available on public domains.

Nook Simple Touch

Nook touch reader, which uses the e-ink technology, has been built with one and only one intention in mind, crafting an e-book-reader without distractions. It doesn’t have fancy apps or games for that matter, to distract readers from reading something valuable. And it doesn’t carry pesky ads.

The grayscale screen resembles much like an actual paper, which has been designed controlling the glare under the direct sunlight, to provide readers with a comprehensive reading experience. The texts appear clear and crisp, and it’s unbelievably comfortable to read them, without your eyes getting dried-up and tired. Built on an android platform, this reader supports all common types of e-book formats including PDF versions. You can view JPEG, BMP, GIF or PNG images with this, however every thing appear in grayscale.

Nook Simple Touch has a built in dictionary, however it doesn’t provide you with text-to speech capabilities which would’ve been a welcoming feature. With Nook Simple touch you can gain access to over 2.5 million books and magazines, and you can burrow more from public libraries, which is great.

This comes with a built-in memory of 2GB, and provides a micro-SD card slot to expand the memory up to 32 GB, which gives you a greater freedom to store thousands of books and magazines, without having to delete them for clearing up memory. The battery life is absolutely great, which according to Nook, would last for about 2 months (when used for only half an hour a day with no wireless connection), and in the practical sense, you could use the device without having to re-charge it, for at least 2-3 weeks, which should be fine for many of the readers. When summed up, Nook simple touch is a fantastic e-book reader giving you an ultimate reading experience.

Sony Reader Wi-Fi (PRS-T1)

Sony is no stranger to the e-book makers’ arena, in fact it has been here making e-books long before Amazon and Barnes and Noble set their feet on the business. This Sony Reader is a super-slim e-book reader aiming to give you an unmatched reading experience at a low cost.

Despite its sleek design it packs some serious features, of course with regular options to change font sizes and styles, and change brightness levels and contrast levels. The reader packs 12 different dictionaries, beating the rivals by miles, and amazingly provides 10 different translations. By a simple double-tab you can get the meaning and different translations of a particular word. The reader also includes a standard 3.5 mm jack to help you listen to audio-books aiming to give you a richer experience.

Kobo e-Reader Touch

Kobo e-Reader jumps into the competition with one simple slogan ‘I do nothing, except making you read, which I do one way or other’. Reducing the distractions, Kobo e-Reader Touch has kept everything simple and elegant, focusing on providing a superior reading experience, like an actual paper-format book does. However it packs the regular features like a built-in dictionary, ability to change font size and style, even adjust margins and line spacing.

You can download e-books from the Kobo store, which provides you access to thousands of e-books, magazines and newspapers however some features found in Amazon Kindle Store are notably absent here. You can burrow books from your public library, view PDF documents and view free books on public domains. Another cool feature found here is the awards presentation in the form of special icons, according to the amount of time you’ve spent reading the books on Kobo, encouraging you to read even more.