The battle between specially designed E Ink e-book readers essentially comes down to the two main competitors: Amazon.com’s Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook. Both have very similar statistics and are endorsed by the two largest booksellers in the country. Both feature black and white e-ink reading displays, which are the closest thing to reading ink on paper that you can get. The real differences come down to experience, you take advantage of a widely used public format and your company’s extensive retail chain; the other is based on simplicity, universal access, and an overwhelming volume of content.
First, let’s look at the Nook. Upon initial inspection, users will notice that instead of physical buttons, the Nook uses a 3.5-inch LCD touchscreen to navigate menus. This setup can be confusing for a beginner. Once you get more comfortable with it, you may find that the Nook is faster and more efficient to navigate. The LCD screen comes at a small price, the battery life is about half that of the Kindle. The Nook is starting to differentiate itself by supporting the ePub format. Many libraries now offer free downloads of book files in ePub format. The Nook further differentiates itself by incorporating the Barnes and Noble retail locations. Users who bring their Nooks with them can read any available title for up to an hour a day via WiFi in the store. Users can also loan certain titles to other Nook users for up to 14 days.
The Kindle is more streamlined. It has a physical keyboard on its face along with a directional button for navigating through the menus.
This serves to be simpler for the uninitiated, but still requires more time than the experienced ones will find at the Nook’s controls. While both units offer free WiFi and WiFi + 3G models, only the Kindle allows web browsing and Wikipedia access over 3G. While the Kindle doesn’t support ePub, it makes up for it with a wider selection of titles.
Amazon features many independent offers, and many titles with expired copyrights are free. The Kindle also has text-to-speech capabilities, which means that any feature-enabled title can be turned into an audiobook. Kindle’s 3G service is available for free in more than 100 different countries. The Nook can only download new content in the United States, including over WiFi.
Since the prices are almost the same between the two, it is difficult to choose a winner. Both are very capable machines, have access to very large content sources, and are relatively simple to operate. The decision comes down to which differences the user values the most. A user who likes the experience of going to a bookstore and looking for books, or who frequents a local library, might prefer the Nook. A user who has a voracious appetite for books, and is always on the go, will find Amazon.com’s large selection and the ability to download almost anywhere in the world preferable.