Ebook Readers - iPad vs Kindle vs Nook

I spend a lot of time reading books in my free time during the weekends. But ever since i started to move across the state it becomes harder for me to carry collection of books with me everytime. Because of this i decide to download the PDF format of most of the essential books(sitepoint books being one of them). But later i realized that reading ebooks in pdf format is as painful as it becomes hard to read the books. This limitation forced me to look for alternatives like ipad and kindle and nook. My plan was to spend money on single platform and then build a substantial library. But my experience with single platform never satisfied when it comes to book collection and comfort so i had to look for the alternative platform. 

Kindle fire is new touch display table that not only lets you read ebooks but also lets you browse the internet, buy from amazon shop and do other small tasks on tablet.

Pros

• Sleek Design
• Light in weight
• Better contrast than earlier versions
• Boosted Storage - upto 5000 books
• Text-to-speech improvements

Cons

• Silk Browser Privacy Issue
• Less usable for other tasks (only meant for ebook reading and buying stuff)

My hunt for kindle alternative landed me to nook device. I was skeptical for the purchase of nook because of it’s less popularity in comparison to amazon kindle. But i decided to take a chance because i needed the ebook reader badly. In comparison to kindle i found nook lightweight and eink technology very appealing as the eye strain was less.

Moving pdf books to nook was painless but only trouble i found with it was sorting. You can’t sort books as per your liking as it allows sorting as per title or author-which is painful. You don’t have to rely on books from b&n as you can download books from google books as well. This feature tempt me to buy nook because amazon kindle has tight platform which restricts you to move within their platform.

Pros

• Faster Page Flipping
• Extendable memory slot (Supports SD cards)
• Fancy & easy to use interface
• Book lending facility
• User-replaceable battery

Cons

• Some books contain blank pages which take time to skip
• Device freezing (specific to some devices)
• Limited battery life (3-4 days which is less than kindle)
• Session sensitive bookmarks (Though it is fixed with update but still there are some bugs)
• Little slow response from touch screen

I’m not a fan of apple hardware so i had to think a lot before purchasing apple ipad. I thought first generation of ipad will replace my kindle and indeed it did replace kindle for me. Ipad not only lets you view the books or the Internet but you can play games and watch movies with it. This was bonus for me and was a perfect replacement for kindle.

Graphics capabilites of iPad are superior to any release of the kindle or nook. Kindle offers grayscale graphics while with iPad you get 32-bit true colors. When it comes to graphics there is no comparison between iPad and any other average ebook reader.

Pros

• Beautiful Graphics
• Wi-Fi/3G
• Various Storage capacity - 16GB/32GB/64GB
• Real-time page flipping

Cons

• No Flash
• Eye-strain while reading
• More weight in comparison to nook/kindle
• Price (More than nook/kindle)