Save web content to read later on mobile devices | Instapaper vs. Pocket (formerly Read It Later)

I’ve had both Instapaper and Pocket (formerly known as “Read It Later) on my iPad and iPhone for a while now, but I hadn’t taken the time to do a real side by side comparison. Both apps are good for saving web content to your device to read later. What’s cool about both apps is that you don’t need to have an internet connection to read the content later. I don’t have a dedicated connection for either of my devices (as I took my sim out of my iPhone last fall to use in my Windows 7 Phone), so I have to rely on WiFi to connect. These apps come in very handy when I’m traveling and don’t necessarily have an internet connection.

This morning I decided I wanted to catch up on my reading from The Chronicle of Higher Education. We were headed to the gym and I wanted to save a few articles for offline reading. I logged into the Chronicle’s website through my university because that way I get all of the content for free (Thank you Penn State Library!). I’ve been using Pocket lately to save articles for offline reading so I saved a few articles and then started Pocket to make sure they were downloaded before we left the house. I discovered this:

I checked out the settings in Pocket and found that they had an option for you to log in to secure websites so that you still save the content to Pocket. I added my information, logged in successfully and tried it again.

Again I received the same message, my Chronicle of Higher Education content accessed through the Penn State Library wasn’t syncing. I decided to try Instapaper. I hadn’t used it in a while, but seemed to recall saving Chronicle content to it before.

It worked! I didn’t have to add any special settings either.

Of the two, I think Pocket has a prettier interface (it’s full color while Instapaper is black and white) and it supports more content (text, images and video vs. Instapaper’s text only support), but for now, at least until Pocket makes it so I can download Chronicle content, I’ll be back to using Instapaper to read my articles.