Is Simple Touch NOOK Better Than Kindle?

There is no perfect e-book reader on the market. Kindle, NOOK, and iPad all have their advantages and disadvantages. Kindle 3 has been the king of the e-reader business for quite some time now. It has been designed so well that its competitors have had trouble competing with it. With the emergence of the second generation NOOK, many are now arguing that the Simple Touch Reader could be superior to Kindle. That’s not entirely true though.

Consumer Reports, whose ratings should be taken with a grain of salt, has put NOOK over Kindle in its latest e-reader ratings. NOOK 2G scores 78 in this rating as opposed to Kindle’s 77. The main reasons for NOOK 2G getting a higher rating than Kindle are its touchscreen and file support. Most experts agree that Kindle touch will be released to the market in the near future. For now, B&N’s latest NOOK has the advantage in this area.

It is amusing that not many experts talk about the fact that e-reader owners are more likely to find cheaper e-books on Amazon than any other place. While one can install Kindle app for Android on NOOKs, it is not a solution that is officially supported by Amazon or B&N.

B&N has done a wonderful job designing NOOK 2G. It has a lot of merits and can hold its own against Kindle. But Amazon’s ecosystem for e-readers remains vastly superior to that of B&N’s.