Pros & Cons
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- Second, smaller color display for touch-screen navigation.
- Wireless downloads.
- 3G and Wi-Fi support.
- Unlike Kindle, supports ePUB format.
- One-million-plus-title library.
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- No DOC or HTML support.
Boasting some capabilities not available in its rival, the Editors' Choice-winning Kindle e-reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook now goes even further to tighten the gap with a lower $199 (direct) price. The Nook not only offers double the book selection (one million versus Amazon's 500,000), and a color, touch screen display, but it also supports the open EPUB format, Wi-Fi access (the Kindle only can use its own 3G network), and a Micro SD memory expansion slot rounds out the Nook's advantages. On top of that, the new 1.3 firmware upgrade adds a Web browser, games, and much-needed faster page turning to make the Nook an even more compelling e-book reader.
Familiar Look Sans QWERTY
The most important feature of any e-book reader is its screen, and the Nook's 6-inch electronic ink display features 16 levels of gray just like the screen on Amazon's
The 11.2-ounce Nook doesn't look all that different from the Kindle, either. At 7.7 by 4.9 by 0.5 inches (HWD) it's a bit smaller and a tad thicker than the 10.3-ounce Amazon device, but the difference is negligible. What is noticeable is the Nook's clean design. The Kindle has 52 buttons on its face, including a four-way directional toggle and a full QWERTY keyboard. The Nook has a mere five.
This is because the Nook's secondary touch-enabled display handles most of its navigation. Below the primary e-ink display is a small (144-by-480-pixel) color capacitive touch screen that displays menu options and even small thumbnails of book covers. There are page turn buttons on either side of the display, but most of your interaction with the Nook will take place on the touch screen.
And it works pretty darn well. The QWERTY keyboard on the Kindle is used almost exclusively for entering book titles and author names, but the touch-screen keyboard on the Nook is just as practical for this limited typing.
Touch-screen interfaces give vendors a lot of flexibility when it comes to design tweaks. By the time you read this, B&N may have already tweaked the interface to make it more useable. As it is today, the display provides options including The Daily, which shows your recent downloads and updates, My Library, Shop, Reading Now, and Settings. It takes a while to get used to changing things on the mini display and watching the main screen react, but it works just fine. Personally, I found it a lot simpler than distinguishing between the Home and Menu buttons on the Kindle.
My biggest complaint with the Nook is that is is kind of slow. Opening books for the first time takes several seconds, although turning pages is much faster. I am hoping this improves as the company refines its software, but right now this is an area where the Kindle definitely has an edge.
Features
The Barnes & Noble eBook Store has more than one million titles, a number that includes the 500,000 or so copyright-free books in ePub format available through Google Books. By comparison, The Kindle Store offers about 360,000 books. In addition to the book catalog, B&N is actively signing content partners to publish on the Nook, and already has heavy hitters like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and, of course, PC Magazine. At this point, the Kindle still has an edge when it comes to the number of magazines and blogs available.
The Nook supports a variety of e-book formats, including FictionWise, PDF, and ePub. Unfortunately, there is no support for DOC or HTML files, which is a serious omission. Support for ePub is particularly notable. While Sony, iRex, and much of the digital publishing world is standardizing on ePub, Amazon has been holding out and sticking to its own proprietary format. The merit of each strategy is debatable, but by supporting ePub the Nook can read more than 500,000 free titles in the Google Books catalog.—
Download and Storage
The Nook features 2GB of internal memory, enough for about 1,500 titles. It also has a microSD slot that can dramatically increase your capacity. A 16GB card can hold an additional 17,500 e-books. Although with wireless access to your online library, local storage capacity becomes less important.
The device runs a variation of the Android operating system, but fanboys shouldn't get too excited. The Nook doesn't support any third-party apps—not yet, anyway.
Buying books with the Nook is perhaps even simpler than it is on the Kindle, because the Shop button is always available in the list of menu items. After choosing to buy a book, it is delivered within seconds. Although the Nook uses AT&T's 3G network and the Kindle uses Sprint's 3G, in my tests, I couldn't detect a coverage difference in New York City. Suffice to say, if you don't get good AT&T coverage where you live, you could be slightly disappointed. But you can also download books via Wi-Fi, which is something you can't do on a Kindle, or any of
Another nice Nook feature is the ability to lend books to other Nook users. If you like a book in your library, you can share it with another reader, who will get access to the title for two weeks. During that time it will be removed from your library, but it will reappear when the loan expires.
In the next few months Nook users will get custom content delivered to their device; it could include anything from a free sample chapter from a local author to an offer for a free cup of coffee. While you're in any B&N store, you'll also have complete access to the text of every book in the eBook Store. Just as you can browse any book in the brick-and-mortar store, you can browse the full text of any book in the online store.
Performance
In my tests, each e-book took only a few seconds to load, while the touch commands required a full beat before they responded. The Nook isn't quite as snappy as, say, an
The Nook charges via the included micro USB cable, and we've yet to perform a battery run-down test. But devices with e-ink displays generally boast long battery life because once a page is drawn, it requires very little, if any, power to maintain. That said, Barnes and Noble executives have admitted that adding a backlit, color mini display and Wi-Fi will likely take a toll on battery life. Whereas the Kindle can run for two weeks without a charge, the Nook might only survive, say, 10 days. Still, that seems like a fair trade-off given the utility of the second screen and the wireless connectivity.
Web Browser
The Nook 1.3 firmware upgrade also adds a Web browser that gives users a minimal black and white view of web pages, and lets you use access points that require web sign in. This is key, since you can only use the browser with Wi-Fi. The Nook's color touch screen is a big plus when it comes to the web browser; the Kindle's experimental browser is limited by the E Ink display. On the Nook, you can use the browser to scroll around the Web page and click buttons and links. And your A box on the E Ink display shows the LCD's control area. It a bit slow and certainly doesn't offer the kind of smooth, fast touch Web browsing you get on the iPad, but navigation with the touch LCD is much easier than using the Kindle's joystick button, and the Nook is easier to hold than the much heavier iPad.
Games: Chess and Sudoku
The new games menu gives access to but two games at this point: Chess and Sudoku. I can't say I'm a big fan of the latter, but the implementation of it on the Nook is quite pleasing, offering easy, medium, hard, and extreme levels and making number placement a snap. You can only play Chess against the machine, and again, moving using the bottom touch LCD is straightforward. This game only offers three difficulty levels. You can take back moves and see the complete move history in standard algebraic chess notation. I really hope that playing against human opponents online is added soon, but the game does offer a decent way to pass the time.
Free books in Barnes & Noble Stores
The update includes another beta "Read in Store" capability that allows you to read selected e-books for free while you're in a Barnes & Noble store. You just get one hour per book, and B&N's blog states that some bestsellers, as well as classics, will be available. I didn't get a chance to try the in-store books yet, but will update this article when I do.
The Verdict
In all, the Nook's updates are all quite welcome. Particularly the faster page turning that nearly brings Nook up to Kindle's speed. The new features make great use of the dual screens on the device, and the Web browser is definitely more pleasant than on the Kindle. One feature on the Kindle but not yet offered by Nook is text-to-speech reading of e-books, but the majority of users likely won't miss this. Still, for now, the Amazon Kindle remains our Editors' Choice e-book reader, but the Nook's new features and reduced $199 price make it a solid read.
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