Difference between java.io.PrintWriter and java.io.BufferedWriter?

PrintWriter gives more methods (println), but the most important (and worrying) difference to be aware of is that it swallows exceptions.

You can call checkError later on to see whether any errors have occurred, but typically you'd use PrintWriter for things like writing to the console - or in "quick 'n dirty" apps where you don't want to be bothered by exceptions (and where long-term reliability isn't an issue).

I'm not sure why the "extra formatting abilities" and "don't swallow exceptions" aspects are bundled into the same class - formatting is obviously useful in many places where you don't want exceptions to be swallowed. It would be nice to see BufferedWriter get the same abilities at some point...

The API reference for BufferedWriter and PrintWriter detail the differences.

The main reason to use the PrintWriter is to get access to the printXXX methods like println(). You can essentially use a PrintWriter to write to a file just like you would use System.out to write to the console.

A BufferedWriter is an efficient way to write to a file (or anything else), as it will buffer the characters in Java memory before (probably, depending on the implementation) dropping to C to do the writing to the file.

There is no such concept as a "PrintReader"; the closest you will get is probably java.util.Scanner.

As said in TofuBeer's answer both have their specialties. To take the full advantage of PrintWriter (or any other writer) but also use buffered writing you can wrap the BufferedWriter with the needed one like this:

PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(                         new BufferedWriter (                             new FileWriter("somFile.txt")));