Nearly every family has that one forgotten sibling. You know the type: he’s a little dull, doesn’t talk much, and goes to bed early. His sister pursues a PhD; he pursues cats around the house. His brother excels at the violin; he excels at watching TV. His birthday parties are drab affairs, with few friends, deflated balloons, and cake that’s just a little less tasty. Such is the plight of the e-reader, the long-forgotten sibling of the smartphone and tablet. Yes, the gloomy signs are all there: dropping sales, troubling figures from screen-maker E Ink, and an IDC report predicting steady declines through the year 2017. Then there are the underwhelming features: low pixel densities, gray-white backgrounds, and pages of text without a single Angry Bird in sight. But e-readers have something that the top smartphones and tablets don’t: an undeniable sense of identity. Quite simply, they’re designed for reading books. Meanwhile, tablets and smartphones are designed to do about 30 different things, few of which most customers really care about. In all likelihood, Apple will continue to assault us with 4.5-minute-long Infinity Blade demos from now until the iPhone 13c, but that doesn’t mean we want to play a repetitive fighting game with one-dimensional gameplay. The same goes for GarageBand on iPad…who’s actually spending Sunday afternoons tapping away at virtual drums? Then there’s the matter of distraction. “I can get absorbed in my Kindle more than the iPad,” said Sid Savara, who has owned three e-readers and two tablets. “With the iPad there are notifications, games, browsing. I feel kind of mentally exhausted. With the e-reader, I can just get lost in a book for hours and when I put it down I feel relaxed.” “The lack of clutter [with e-readers] allows the users to dive straight into the content without distraction,” said Jordan Edelson, CEO of Appetizer Mobile. “For users that can filter those distractions out, a tablet is the way to go. For everyone else, I would recommend the e-reader.” Finally, there’s price. When you buy a … Continue reading The Top 5 e-Readers on the Market