According to a new study by Dr. Jakob Nielsen, a person can read a printed book up to 10 percent faster than the same book on an iPad, Kindle 2 or a PC monitor. Although the study shows you can read the printed word faster, all the test subjects hated reading via the PC monitor.
24 regular book readers were given short stories by Hemingway to read. Overall, each finished reading in about 17 minutes. Those numbers changed when the reading was done on the iPad or the Kindle 2, up to 10 percent slower in some cases. Even though the numbers were slower for the two devices, there wasn’t any findings to say the iPad or the Kindle 2 were better for reading than the other.
In addition to the reading study, test subjects were also asked to rank how they liked to read with each format, from 1 to 7. The iPad, Kindle 2 and printed book were ranked practically right next to each other, while the PC monitor hit rock bottom with only 3.6 points.
With such a small test group of only 24, that really doesn’t give much to talk about with the results. If the test group was 2400, the numbers would mean a lot more. Nonetheless, readers would rather read from a tablet or printed book because they claimed reading from a PC monitor felt too much like they were at work.
