Best eReader for PDF's
The importance of PDF support for an e-book reader is best known to those who have used their reader to read .pdf documents at least once in life. Since PDF (PDF stands for Portable Document Format) is predominantly designed to reproduce page images, it has to be re-flowed to fit the screen width and size of these e-readers. It's but obvious that it is difficult to view .pdf files which are mainly designed for printing on standard paper sizes on screens with limited size and resolution - a predominant characteristic of e-book readers available today.
eReaders for PDF Format
The popularity of this format is such that there is absolutely no dearth of e-readers which support it. The real question though, is whether they do justice with this format. The list of e-book readers which support PDF file format is quite lengthy, and includes names like Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle DX, Barnes & Noble Nook, Barnes and Noble Nook Color, Kobo eReader, Sony Reader Daily Edition, Sony Reader Touch Edition, Sony Reader Pocket Edition, iRiver Story, etc. The list also includes quite a few more names, but they are not as popular as the list of names mentioned here. Even those e-readers which do not support this format directly, give its users the option of converting these files to other formats which they support. With so many options to choose from, the task of choosing the best becomes all the more difficult.
Best eReader for PDFs
As we mentioned earlier, the data in PDF format has to be re-flowed to make it fit the screen width and size of various e-book readers manufactured today. That being said, an e-reader which boasts of large screen size and high resolution can work wonders for your PDF documents. In short the screen size and resolutions are the most important factors which have the tendency to make a e-book reader the best PDF e-book reader available. With that clause in place, the best reader among the available options seems to be Amazon Kindle DX which boasts of a decent dimensions at 10.4 x 7.2 x 0.4. It has a screen size measuring 9 in diagonally which is again a boon for your .pdf documents. As opposed to other versions of Kindle, Kindle DX can display these documents without having to convert them to any other format. Its speed and ability to display charts and equations also play a crucial role in making Kindle DX the best. On this e-reader, you also get to annotate your .pdf documents which is quite useful in itself.
In a bid to find the best PDF e-book reader, we also stumbled upon Apple iPad. Even though it is a full-fledged tablet PC, we decided to give it a shot and the results were quite amazing indeed. The 1024 768 px, 9.7 in display that the iPad sports does work in its favor and gives it an edge over other e-book readers - most of which sport a 600 800 px, 6 in display. Even though the iPad has an edge in terms of PDF support, Kindle DX does edge out iPad in the overall race largely due to the price factor. You need to give a serious thought to the price factor, as the iPad is priced at a whopping US$499 - not quite costly if you take into consideration the fact that it is a tablet PC which doubles up as many other devices including an e-book reader, while Kindle DX is priced at US$379 as of now.
Even though Kindle DX has a sure shot advantage over others in terms of PDF support, owing to its large screen size, it is highly unlikely that you will buy an e-book reader only for its PDF support and hence you should also take other things into consideration before finalizing on any one of them.
