What you prefer reading, paper books or e-books? Well I must tell you that if you want to complete a book in speed, do opt for paper books. Yes, a recent survey shows that reading ebooks is considerably slower than reading standard paper books. Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group conducted a study on 24 participants to find out which is easier and friendly to read, ebook or a paper version. The result was shocking enough.
Each participant was asked to read a short story by Ernest Hemingway on each of the devices. Nielsen found that those using an iPad were 6.2 percent slower and the Kindle 2 was 10.7 percent slower compared to those reading a standard book. Although Jakob Nielsen looked at just 24 users, the difference in reading speed between the electronic devices and the printed book was obvious enough to be just about statistically considerable.
The participants also rated their reading experience, iPad, Kindle scored 5.8, 5.7 and 5.6 and a PC did substantially worse, with a usability score of 3.6.
“Most of the users’ free-form comments were predictable,” says Nielsen. ”For example, they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad actually, the iBook app indicated the amount of text left in a chapter.”
He also added, “We can expect higher-quality screens in the future, as indicated by the recent release of the iPhone 4 with a 326 dpi display. But even the current generation is almost as good as print in formal performance metrics and actually scores slightly higher in user satisfaction.”
Tags: amazon, dpi, ebook, faster and easier, iPad, Iphone, iphone 4, kindle, paper books, reading speed, usability