Read a socket direclty from InputStream or from BufferedReader?

Question

My goal is to read the n number of bytes from a Socket.

Is it better to directly read from the InputStream, or wrap it into a BufferedReader?

Throughout the net you find both approaches, but none states which to use when.

Socket socket;
is = socket.getInputStream();
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));

char[] buffer = new char[CONTENT_LENGTH];

//what is better?
is.read(buffer);
br.read(buffer);