The e-reader market has seen massive growth in recent years, with many companies seizing the opportunity to introduce their own devices. The top e-readers as of right now are the Amazon Kindle, Apple’s iPad, and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

There are many different Reasons to consider each device, depending on the buyer’s taste and the amount they are willing to spend on an e-reader. The most expensive of these three is the iPad which retails at $499 for the 16Gb model. The Nook and Kindle, by comparison, sell from $149-$249 and $114-$190 respectively.

The main reason for this price disparity is that the Nook and Kindle are dedicated e-readers; they function solely for reading e-books. The iPad on the other hand is designed to fill several technology niches, such as video playback and internet browsing. The iPad simply does more than either the Nook or Kindle, which is a tantalizing factor when deciding which one to buy.

Screens

If you are only interested in getting the best reading experience possible, then getting a dedicated e-reader is the way to go. With the Kindle and Nook you get an e-ink screen which prevents your eyes from getting sore and it also allows you to read in direct sunlight. This is the most noticeable advantage of e-ink readers when compared to the iPad and even netbooks, which all use backlit LCD screens.

If you have ever sat in front of a computer screen for more than an hour, you know how badly your eyes start to strain. But with these devices there is no ambient light coming off the screen.

Speed

When it comes to speed, there are noticeable differences between these e-readers. For instance, when using either the Kindle or Nook (and even the Sony Reader), there is a split-second pause before turning a page. This pause is the screen refreshing itself. Due to the way the e-ink screen works it has to constantly refresh the entire screen in order to display the next page.

Though this isn’t distracting, nor is it a painfully slow process, it is quite different compared to the elegant page flipping on the iPad. When using the e-book app on the iPad, you simply touch the corner of the page and drag it over to the other side of the screen. It replicates turning a real page to such a degree that you can make the paper fold over and wave, like you can with real paper. While this isn’t crucial to the reading experience, it’s a nice touch that would otherwise make turning a page more mechanical and rigid.

Bookstores

One of the last things to consider is the place where you will buy your e-books. All three of these devices have their own independent bookstores, with varying price ranges. The Amazon Kindle store generally sells mass-market books for $9.99, with some publishers choosing to set this price a few dollars higher. On top of this, if your Kindle is lost or stolen, Amazon automatically backs up your data on an exchange server.

This means you can seamlessly move your books over to a new Kindle, or even to your computer, cell phone, or other portable device. The bookstores for the Nook and iPad have slightly higher prices, on average, and a cursory search through their catalog doesn’t seem to show as many books available as on the Amazon Kindle store.