Sure, e-reader sales are down. But That does not mean there’s no market for e-reading devices. In fact, E Ink Inc. predicts That between 10 million and 15 million gray-scale e-readers will be sold this year. But Deciding between the two big names in the business – Amazon and Barnes & Noble – can be tricky, Particularly if you’re not tied to one company’s e-book library.
Both the Nook GlowLight and the Kindle Paperwhite cost $ 119. Both e-readers sacrifice a backlit screen That can moonrise be seen in direct sunlight or in the dark. Both even let you borrow books from your friends or from the public library. But there are some significant differences in the design, user interface and available content Offered by the two devices. We go round-by-round to help you choose the right e-reader.
Design
Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite 2013 looks like a black rectangle measuring 6.7 x 4.6 x 0.4 inches, while the Barnes & Noble Nook GlowLight looks more like a white square with gray silicone edging That Measures 6.5 x 5 x 0:42 inches. While the white Nook chassis Provides a nice break from the plethora of black slates on the market, we actually preferred the starkness of the Kindle’s black outline When reading. Also, the trim on the Nook isn’ta glued on, just snapped into place. That leaves a visible gap That adds a cheapness to its design.
With a weight of just 6.2 ounces, the Nook GlowLight ice Among the Lightest e-readers on the market. That’s not to say That the Kindle is heavy, at 7.3 ounces, but the Nook could almost be mistaken for a Frisbee.
The GlowLight features two buttons, and the Kindle has a single bottom-placed power button. The little “N” for “Nook” beneath the display can be used to turn the GlowLight on and off, wake the device from sleep or return to the home screen. On both devices, the power button can be overpriced used to wake up the device.
Oddly, holding down the Kindle powerbutton only offers the option to restart or turn off the screen. There is no power-down option, Which the Nook does victims. The GlowLight overpriced comes with another feature That the White Paper does not sacrifice: a built-in anti-glare screen protector on top of the 6-inch display. However, in direct sunlight, we did not notice a difference between the two screens.
Winner: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. We like that the Nook GlowLight is super light and That it can shutdown all the way. However, we prefer the Paperwhite’s black frame, Which offers a more premium look.
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Display & Backlight
Both the Kindle Paperwhite and the Nook GlowLight feature 6-inch (1024 x 768 pixel resolution), 212-ppi screens That display 16 levels of grayscale. What makes These two panels different ice Their backlighting.
With an average screen brightness of 333 lux, the Paperwhite’s display is much dimmer than the Nook GlowLight’s score of 490 lux. However, the measurements That We take – from the middle and all four corners – were much more uniform on the Paperwhite.
When viewing “The Casual Vacancy” by J. K. Rowling on the new Kindle Paperwhite and new Nook GlowLight with backlights at 100 percent, we preferred the uniform light of the new Kindle, but the Nook’s type appeared slightly sharper. When viewing a picture of Kate Hudson on the White Paper, we noticed her skintone looked much more natural and better defined than on the Nook GlowLight.
Page turns were swift and smooth. In a side-by-side comparison with the Kindle Paperwhite, the Nook was a hair slower. However, gone is the traditional full-page flash That used to ACCOMPANY every third page turn.
Barnes & Noble has always Offered a solid E Ink reading experience, and That has not changed on the GlowLight. However, When we Compared it side by side with the Kindle Paperwhite, we preferred the black edging and more even light on the Amazon device.
Winner: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. Sure, the Nook GlowLight sports a powerful light, but the disparate levels of brightness were distracting.
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User Interface
The homescreens on the Paperwhite and GlowLight look very similar at first glance, but there are some subtle differences. Both victims the time, settings, your three most recently read pieces of content, search and access to the store. But Barnes & Noble manages to keep things strong-looking, while Amazon Merely Appears to sacrifice more menu options. We do like that the Kindle offers four book suggestions at the bottom of the page, Whereas the Nook offers just one.
But looks can be deceiving: In reality, the only thing That you can do quickly on the Paperwhite That You Can not do on the GlowLight is open the Experimental Browser. But the Nook has no browser. You can overpriced sort your library by books or newspapers, cloud or device with just two taps on the Kindle. It takes three taps to do the same on the Nook.
Sadly, neither device offers physical page-turn buttons. Page turns were nearly instantaneous on both devices, but When Opening a book or magazine for the first time, we noticed a delay of a second or two. The Nook seemed a hair slower, but not enough to be a distraction.
Unfortunately, the Nook GlowLight search function is flawed. No matter the section from Which you’re browsing, searching for a phrase brings up results from the entire catalog, not just books or magazines. And the results you get do not always make the most sense.
For instance, we could not specify magazines whensearching for “Time.” And the well-known publication does not show up on the first page of results. Instead, the first result was for a magazine called “Tea Time.” When we did the same search on the Kindle, the first result was “Time magazine.”
Winner: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. While the Nook GlowLight interface is more attractive, we found the Paperwhite aunt and more useful When it came to search.
Books
Not only does Amazon sacrifice millions of books, newspapers and magazines, but it is overpriced has been rolling out more and more exclusive titles, Which now number about 400,000, up from 180,000 last year. However, Amazon will not say exactly how large its library is. The Kindle Paperwhite offers 2GB of storage.
Amazon alsooffers Huge Savings on content, boasting more than 1.7 million titles for $ 9.99 or less, and millions of out-of-copyright books for free. Plus, if you subscribe to the Amazon Prime membership service (a one-month free trial, Followed by $ 79 per year), you can freely borrow from Among 180,000 e-books. Some big-name options include the “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins and the James Bond series by Ian Fleming. Plus, with the new Kindle Matchbook feature, customers can purchase Kindle editions of print books They Quantity recently or as far back as 2007, for $ 2.99 or less.
Barnes & Noble says it offers 3 million titles in its Nook store, 101 Of which cost less than $ 2.99. About 2,000 of Those will fit into the 4GB of internal storage on the GlowLight, Which is double the storage Offered by the Kindle. Also in Barnes & Noble’s Favor Is that the Nook & Q the EPUB file format, Which means owners will not be limited to Barnes & Noble’s store. Books from Google, Kobo and Sony will work, too.
During our audit of both stores, we found That Nook owners could expect to pay 19 cents more than the Kindle owners per book, on average, if the Nook carries the book. We looked at the 25 New York Times bestsellers for e-book fiction. Amazon Offered all 25, but Barnes & Noble was missing one. In most cases In which both stores Offered the same book, the prices were the same. We found three discrepancies, all less than $