eReader Battle: eSlick vs. Kindle

eSlick is a digital book reader developed by Foxit Software late last year and has been on the market since this year. When it was first introduced, it had a significant advantage over Amazon's Kindle which at that time was sold at $359. eSlick undercut the price by introducing it to the market at a promotional price of $229 and then $259 later on.

The eReader uses an electronic-paper display designed by E Ink Corporation, the same company that makes the Kindle's. The light reflects off the images and words on the screen instead of lighting the screen up with a backlight. That makes it a lot less strained on the eyes and provides a sharp, black-and-white screen that reads just like it would on real paper.

So now you can read text just as easily in bright sunlight as you would in your own living room, says on its Web site.

Based on the E-ink technology, the eSlick does not use any power to maintain a page display while only using power when an image is changed, says its Web site. This means that no matter how long the page is displayed, it uses no additional power.

eSlick and Kindle come close in size, eSlick Reader has a dimension of 7.4" x 4.7" x 0.4" which Kindle is 8" x 5.3" x 0.36". So Kindle is a slightly larger but a tiny bit thinner. Both have 6-inch screens. But eSlick weighs a lot less than Kindle, 6.4 ounces versus 10.2 ounces.

The big drawback of eSlick is it doesn't have wireless connectivity like Kindle does. So readers will not be able to think of a book and download it on the go. That requires more planning and to be less spontaneous.

But "at least that process is free," according to a gadget blog. "Automatic newspaper delivery to a Kindle costs at least $10 per month--each. Blogs cost $1 to $2 per month--each. At least with the eSlick, you don't have to email your own documents to yourself, as you must with the Kindle," it says.

Over 64,000 eBooks are now available for eSlick, including new releases, best sellers and classics, with new ebooks added weekly to the eSlick eBooks store. It is only a small fraction comparing to Kindle's access to more than 360,000 books. This is an area Kindle is likely to have an absolute advantage in the market for a period of time, thanks to its owner Amazon.com.

So far, the eSlick device menus are only available in English. But it allows you to read any document or eBook written in any language.

Now the price of Kindle has now gone down to $259 since, which one would you go for?

(All the comparison in this article is to Amazon's Kindle, not Kindle DX)

To see a video about eSlick, click here.