If your holiday suitcase is bulging with books or your bookcase is stuffed to bursting then you' might find an e-book reader an appealing prospect. These lightweight portable devices put an entire library of reading material in the palm of your hand.
They're geared for the voracious reader: from their dimensions and shape, which closely mirror that of a paperback book, to the advanced e-ink display, which eliminates the need for a backlight and can be read in just about any light without worrying about reflected glare or eye strain.
E-book readers are also incredibly frugal when it comes to energy consumption, only requiring energy to refresh the display, such as when you turn a page. Most promise 6,000 to 8,000 page flips between charges.
There's a premium to pay: the devices cost upwards of £170 and that's before you purchase an e-book, which tends to cost roughly the same as a paperback. Thankfully, many old classics from the likes of Austen, Dickens, Kipling and Twain are available for free online, so you can quickly recoup some of your initial outlay from sites such as Project Gutenberg and epubBooks.com.
But which reader to get? We've rounded up five current e-book readers and put them to the test.
