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Barnes and Noble Nook
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
E-readers never really caught my attention until... well I guess they still haven't really caught my attention. That iPad thingamajigger, though, looks promising. Regardless, Josh put his faith in Barnes and Noble and went with the Nook. Here's his review.
Reviewed by
Josh Rees
Barnes and Noble Nook E-Reader
I actually bought it shortly before Christmas, somewhere around the 16th. After I bought it, I was disappointed to find out that it was back-ordered until February 1st, even though it actually came out at the end of November. Surprisingly, the Nook came a few days before the first, so that was nice.
When I got it, it came in a 12x9" brown cardboard box. After opening it up, I was surprised to find that there was no padding or protection for the device. However, I came to find out it was held securely in place with a pretty unique little system; the Nook box is laid out on a slab of cardboard and under a connected sheet of plastic. The plastic is loose enough to slip the Nook box in and after you've done so, you fold down the edges, which connect together and pull the plastic tight enough to hold it in place. Once you get to the actual packaging, it reveals a very sleek design that actually looks like they put some thought into it, with the Nook on full display. In fact, the box that it comes in is made to double as a carrying case for the Nook, as it's made of very heavy plastic and has a stand built in.
I inspected the device to see where the power button was, and once I found it on top, it took about a minute to start up. Within a minute or two, my Nook had already downloaded three books from Barnes and Noble, a pleasant little surprise. The Nook is a pleasure to hold. It's lightweight at about 3/4 of a lb., and the shape of the device fits in your hands perfectly. The main screen is e-ink based, like the Kindle and the Sony Reader, and can display black and white pictures in superb quality detail. Reading on the Nook is exactly like reading magazine paper, because it has a slight shine to it. The touchscreen is capacitive and supports swipe motions, and serves as a sort of control panel for the Nook. It also has a Micro USB port, as well as a MicroSD slot that can accommodate up to 16 gigabytes of memory.
The software was intriguing, but didn't run as smoothly as it should've. When you tap a button on the touchscreen, it takes a second or two for the touchscreen menu to change, and then takes another two seconds for the e-ink screen to reconfigure that next page. The operating system is slightly laggy and just doesn't perform at the level you'd expect it to, especially when you consider how little the device actually has to do. The latest firmware update sped things up decently, but it's still not where it should be.
br> The Nook supports three different formats: .ePub, .pdf, and .pdb. It has a speaker, but only supports .mp3 files. Supported image files are .jpeg, .gif, .png, and .bmp. It doesn't support Office files, .lit, .txt, .azw (Amazon), or .lrx (Sony eReader). The Nook is compatible with Mac and Windows, and acts as an external hard drive. At this point, you can drag and drop files, and if you have eBooks from Barnes and Noble, you can put them all on the Nook. You can access the files in 'My Library', which is on the home menu on the touchscreen. You can read the text in three different fonts and five sizes. If you change these settings while reading, it takes about ten seconds to reload the text, which is too long. You also can't resize the text on a .pdf file, so whether or not they're readable depends on the individual file. Sometimes the Nook just can't read certain .pdfs, too. There are left and right buttons on both sides of the device, so you can flip through the pages however you want. Shopping is simple - just click the shop button on the touchscreen and you're at the Barnes and Noble e-reader bookstore. There you'll find a variety of categories to browse, and you can also search (with a full qwerty keyboard). I have searched for a book, bought it, and been reading it within a minute, so that's how simple it can be if your account is set up correctly. This is why it's important to register your Nook when you get it. It also gets free AT&T 3G.
Thanks to the most recent firmware update, most of the little complaints I had are gone. The system is still slightly sluggish, which is a shame. Scrolling on the touch screen isn't smooth yet, and the swipe controls feel a bit hesitant. The battery life is great. If you're constantly reading, you'll get about five solid days. It needs better .pdf support for sure, but I guess that's one way to discourage the reading of free books. One accessory that it should really ship with is a cleaning cloth, like some Apple products have, because if I'm paying $259 for this thing, I wanna keep it in good condition. The only way to get one currently is to buy the screen protector, which ended up being too small for the actual screen, and not worth the cost. I know I can't rightfully complain about the lack of backlighting on the screen since no e-reader has one yet, but why is that? Couldn't they just use the backlighting technology we've had for years on basic digital watches? Last, it's too easy to turn the Nook off when you're trying to wake it up.
If you really want to learn how to use the Nook, do the Take A Tour demo, because that is all you get in the way of a manual, and the OS can be slightly confusing if you don't. There are some cool ways to spice up your Nook, too. These skins, for example, are some of the most detailed and awesome I've seen for any device, wrapping completely around the Nook. Certain ones even come with a download link for a wallpaper that matches, or rather continues, the skin. You can also get a variety of high quality wallpapers and screensavers from Nook Look. With an Android based OS, people have gotten the Nook to run some apps, and even a browser, so an App store might be in the future for Nook users, as well as perhaps a way to "jailbreak" it to run third party apps. Overall, the Nook is a fabulous device with some flaws. I've gone through three firmware updates since getting mine, and I've seen improvements with each one. As long as Barnes and Noble keeps rolling out the updates at this rate, the bugs should be worked out within a reasonable amount of time. I was going to give the Nook a 5/7, but with all the potential the future holds for this device, I'm going to bump it up to a 6/7.
TL;DR - The Nook has a great form factor, as well as a capacitive touchscreen and a high quality e-ink screen. The software's a little laggy, but it has great potential due to its Android based OS. It's completely sufficient as an e-reader device, and gives you access to the entire Barnes and Noble collection.
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