top e-readers

Iriver Story HD review: A pixel-packing e-reader

Products like the $139 Iriver Story HD are a challenge to review. Why? Well, because it's a perfectly decent, reasonably priced product that has one glaring drawback: it doesn't have any significant advantages over its closest competitors, the Kindle, Nook, and Kobo Touch Edition. So, why buy it?

Iriver would like to have you think that the Story HD's higher-resolution (768x1,024 pixels) display should be a mitigating factor in your choice. That has enabled the company to tout it as the world's "highest-resolution 6-inch e-reader." Except for the additional resolution, however, it's … Read more

Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook Color earn CNET Editors' Choice Awards

We don't always do special blog posts announcing that a certain product has received a CNET Editors' Choice Award, but in the case of our two new winners--the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes & Noble Nook Color--we're taking a moment to explain our decision for a couple for reasons.

For starters, in the case of the third-generation Amazon Kindle, the product has already been out a few months. So why award it an Editors' Choice now? Well, we had been leaning for a long while toward stamping it with an "EC," but upon hearing rumors that … Read more

Full review: Nook Color

Barnes & Noble announced today that its new "reader's tablet," the $250 touch-screen Nook Color, has begun shipping slightly ahead of schedule to customers who preordered the device. Some may even receive their units as early as today.

As for us, well, we picked up a review unit the other day at the company's headquarters in New York and put it through its paces over the last few days. While we still think Barnes & Noble has some work to do with adding more apps, all in all, the Nook Color is a very capable e-reader … Read more

Borders unveils updated Kobo eReader with Wi-Fi

When it was released a few months ago, the Kobo eReader was one of the first e-readers to sell for less than $150. Alas, it wasn't all that great and it was quickly overshadowed when Barnes & Noble introduced its Wi-Fi Nook for $149 and Amazon later followed with an all-new $139 Wi-Fi Kindle. But now Kobo and Borders, which is an investor in Kobo (Kobo powers Borders' e-book store), are set to release a new, improved wireless Kobo eReader this October for $139.99.

On the outside, the new model looks almost identical to the older model, but … Read more

Hands-on review of the Kindle 3

Just as Apple's iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, Amazon wasn't the first company on the block to release an e-book reader--NuvoMedia's RocketBook and the early Sony Readers all beat the Kindle to market. But it's hard to argue that the online retailer's Kindle isn't the iPod of the e-book reader market. The Kindle has helped usher the e-book reader from gadget curiosity to a burgeoning mass-market device, all in less than three short years.

And now, amid a much more competitive market, Amazon is debuting the third-generation Kindle.

The first thing you … Read more