Mobileread's Which one should I buy? forum is great for helping people sort out the pros & cons of various ebook readers.
The good news: they're all great for casual reading. And while they have their differences, the general rule is "people are happy with the one they got."
The bad news: nothing is great for PDFs, because PDFs are designed with *pages* in mind, and any screen that isn't the same size as the page is going to have problems. Especially scanned PDFs, if you're working with those; they can't easily convert to anything else, because they're images, not text.
If you mostly need to read letter-sized PDFs, look for something with a larger screen: the Kindle DX, or Hanlin A9, or Pocketbook 903. (Ereader chart of doooom may be useful. Or may just be overwhelming; that's a lot of data.) If you need *color* PDFs, there's really nothing good in the dedicated-ereader market right now; you'd be better off with a netbook. (Or an iPad. Which, as you've noted, is pricey as hell.)
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The good news: they're all great for casual reading. And while they have their differences, the general rule is "people are happy with the one they got."
The bad news: nothing is great for PDFs, because PDFs are designed with *pages* in mind, and any screen that isn't the same size as the page is going to have problems. Especially scanned PDFs, if you're working with those; they can't easily convert to anything else, because they're images, not text.
If you mostly need to read letter-sized PDFs, look for something with a larger screen: the Kindle DX, or Hanlin A9, or Pocketbook 903. (Ereader chart of doooom may be useful. Or may just be overwhelming; that's a lot of data.) If you need *color* PDFs, there's really nothing good in the dedicated-ereader market right now; you'd be better off with a netbook. (Or an iPad. Which, as you've noted, is pricey as hell.)