If you can’t see the upside to an e-reader, you’re welcome to come help me move. When I last moved, to a deluxe 4th floor walk-up, my cadre of sweaty, aching friends made me vow to either buy a Kindle or hire movers next time. Well, I haven’t bought anything yet, and my lease is running out. What keeps me living with medieval tech stacked up in shelves along my walls?When you ask “why books?” a lot bibliophiles say something like, “There’s just nothing like having that physical book, you know?” which, forgive me, just begs the question. If pressed, or if they’ve actually thought about it for more than a second, some bibliophiles will claim that reading off a screen, in comparison to a page, is harder on their eyes. Now we’re getting somewhere.So is it?A team of French researchers busted out some Guy de Maupassant in order to figure it out, and have published their results in PLOS One. They tested people who read for 70 minutes off the old wood pulp page against 70 minutes off Amazon’s Kindle and also off the Kindle Fire HD to see if any of the three—print, e-ink, or LCD—produced more or less visual fatigue or eyestrain.From a subjective point of view, it’s just as those antiquarians attest: People reported the most visual fatigue after reading from the LCD. There wasn’t much of a difference between the e-ink and the printed page, just as Amazon promised.Twelve readers came in for three different reading sessions, and the researchers did their best to control the variables: the font, the type size, the word count, the lighting as much as they could, and even the distance between the eye and the word.But one thing they couldn’t control was whether people knew what they were reading off. A literally blind comparison just isn’t practical when you’re testing for visual fatigue, it seems.So instead, the researchers looked at the amount of blinks per second as people read, and found that while reading the LCD screen, people were blinking demonstrably less. This could be drying out the eyes, which could explain the visual fatigue. There wasn’t a difference in blinking between e-ink and paper books, leading the researchers to conclude that “e-ink is indeed very similar to the paper.”Of course, given everyone’s awareness of the reading device, the study admits that “the overall belief that digital reading media reduce the pleasure of reading could be cultural rather than cognitive,” which must be what those there’s-just-nothing-like-a-physical-book folks are getting at.As for me, I don’t really have a reason for defaulting to books either than just for that reason—they’re the default. My mother assures me that she enjoys reading books on her iPad but I’m almost sure that I wouldn’t—not because of eyestrain but because I’m incredibly shiftless, and ever since I found that basketball app for free in the app store, I’ve needed to leave my phone across the room to get any reading done—certainly neither a physical shortcoming, nor one of the reader in a general, but rather a personal one.So that’s two points in favor of the Kindle, Sony E-Reader, or Nook, I guess, if those things still exist—no eye fatigue and fewer apps. Plus, when I move back down those four flights of stairs, I could spare myself hours and moving expenses, and maybe even keep my friends.
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