eBooks & eBook Readers Reduce Reading Speed: Study on Kindle, iPad and Books Reveals

Right now, the use of eBook readers and the digitally formatted eBooks has become all the rage. However, do they really hold benefits to the readers other than the obvious convenience they offer?

A study that contemplated the use of reading on the iPads, Kindles, PCs and printed materials show that they may in fact negatively affect the reading capacities of the users.

Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, a product development consultancy organization brought the facts to light in a recent usability study.

It was found from the study that the user’s reading speed went down by 10.7 percent on the Kindle compared to printed materials. Ernest Hemingway material was used for the study. It was also found that reading speeds declined by 6.2 percent on the iPad.

However, it was quoted by Nielsen that the results of the study were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability”, and thus results should not be interpreted as saying for certain that users of the Kindle read much slower than they do on the iPad.

The study seemingly did not include the use of other eBook Readers such as the Nook.