Amazon’s Kindle tops Consumer Reports E-Book Reader ratings

July Issue Features Ratings of Nine Models; Review of the Apple iPad as an E-Book Reader

Yonkers, NY — New e-book readers keep hitting the market, yet a veteran model, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader tops Consumer Reports first full Ratings of these devices. Despite improvement to the rival Barnes & Noble Nook e-book reader and the arrival of Apple’s iPad tablet computer, which offers e-reader capability, Amazon’s Kindle is still the best choice for most consumers. The report and Ratings of e-book readers is featured in the July issue of Consumer Reports and on www.ConsumerReports.org.

Consumer Reports testers recently put nine e-book readers through comprehensive lab tests. Amazon’s Kindle, $260.00, and its super-sized sibling, the Kindle DX, $490.00, had crisper, more readable type than any other model in the Ratings and slightly better than the Apple iPad, whose e-reading capabilities were assessed but excluded from the Ratings (see below). The Kindles were among the fastest at refreshing and turning pages. For most users, the lower-priced Kindle is a better choice than the DX because of its lighter weight and smaller size, unless extra real estate is needed for reading content such as e-textbooks. [Read more]