Call us overly picky, but we have yet to find a digital approach-plate solution we can completely endorse. Perhaps the problem is that they have yet to surpass the bar. That is, theyre almost as good as paper when what we really want is something better than paper.

In fairness, the e-reader solutions for approach plates are superior in three critical ways: You can carry plates for the entire country without risking a hernia, updates are a breeze (so long as youve got some free time and a good internet

connection) and there’s no wasted paper. The readers all support PDF documents, so you can also load useful items like your aircraft handbook or maintenance manual if there’s space to do so.

Beyond that, we enter the realm of compromise. The common e-readers are all lightweight and have batteries that last for weeks. But the screens that allow this have less contrast than paper-the white is really light gray-and no internal backlight. Readers that fit easily in your hand have viewing areas most pilots find too small to view a complete plate, which necessitates panning and zooming. Bigger screens mean devices with the dimensions of a clipboard, and now use behind a yoke or finding a way to mount it becomes an issue.

Until the perfect hardware appears, or someone steps up with a new approach plate actually designed for a digital display, heres where we stand with e-readers available today. As there are many sources for the plates to view on an e-reader, we’ll only cover the bigger players.

Kindle DX