Results Are In: iPad vs Kindle vs PC vs books
Nielsen’s company made an effort to balance out the experience, making sure user’s were up to speed on how to use the Kindle and iPad for example, and having test subjects read a short story by Ernest Hemingway which took 17 minutes and 20 seconds to read, on average.
After the reading each user was given a questionnaire to test their comprehension of the story. Nielsen reports that almost of the test takers got almost all of the questionnaire correct, regardless of which device they used.
The loser of the content was the PC, coming in dead last with a score of 3.6 – on a scale of 1 to 7, 7 being the highest. After this it was almost a dead heat:
The iPad, Kindle, and the printed book all scored 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6, respectively.
As far as the speed of reading, the printed book won first prize. Nielsen reports the iPad users generally had a 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, while the Kindle came in at 10.7% slower than print.
Nielsen said:
“… the only fair conclusion is that we can’t say for sure which device offers the fastest reading speed. In any case, the difference would be so small that it wouldn’t be a reason to buy one over the other…
…But we can say that tablets still haven’t beaten the printed book.”
