In this work we compare official lower-secondary physics and chemistry textbooks with two other handbooks, one American ("Physics by Inquiry") and one Greek ("Introduction to Physical Sciences"). The alternative textbooks have been written by science education researchers, and their writing was based on the inquiry and constructivist learning models respectively. The evaluation of the above books was performed by 34 secondary Greek science teachers who teach mainly at lower-secondary school. The following textbook features formed the basis for the comparison: content, structure, readability, methodology and comprehension. Eight units of lesson were studied: heat, chemical reactions, gravity, solutions, energy, electricity, mass-density, linear simple movement. While, because of the marginally small sample, the statistical analysis does not lead to secure conclusions in many cases, there appear general trends in the quantitative results that point at a general superiority of the written by experts books over the school books in nearly all examined features.