Toy Box: e-book readers

It began by mimicking a book, but in digital, then it added a touch screen, and the latest Kindle (HK$920-HK$1,400) takes another huge step forward.

As well as being super sharp, the six-inch touch screen is studded with tiny LED lights that illuminate the page, but somehow don't affect the battery life, which is now eight weeks. The Paperwhite also sees the arrival of "Time to Read", a feature that monitors your reading speed to calculate when you'll finish the current chapter. The Paperwhite comes with either Wi-fi or 3G connectivity, and holds up to 1,100 books in its 2GB brain. It might lack illumination, but the six-inch, 2GB-endowed PRS-T2 (HK$1,000) in white, red or black has some bright ideas.

Also built around a touch screen, this e-reader is all about sharing; the Wi-fi module enables book quotes to be shared on Facebook, while also fetching any web clippings saved to an Evernote account. It's not explicitly aimed at younger readers, though that ability to read text from the internet helps. The inclusion of a stylus for quickly making notes suggests an academic future for the PRS-T2. If you like the idea of lighting, but not the price or closed ecosystem of the Kindle, the Kobo Glo (HK$1,000) comes thoroughly recommended.

Its ComfortLight is the star turn, with the increasingly standard issue touch screen, Wi-fi and 2GB of storage also here, though it's worth knowing that everything from lamp intensity to font size, contrast and sharpness can be finely calibrated to suit. As well as linking to Kobo's extensive digital e-book library, the Glo includes a browser for exploring the web at large, too.