Amazon may have finally released an ebook reader with a touch screen, but Barnes & Noble is still one step ahead. The new Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch ($99 direct), formerly called the Nook Touch, is now $40 less expensive, and also features improved software with faster page refreshes. As a result, it retains its Editors' Choice award as the best low-cost ebook reader you can buy. The best part: if you already have a Nook Touch, you can upgrade its operating system for free.

Design and Screen
The Nook is significantly smaller than its predecessor, thanks to the removal of everything but the screen and the bezel. It weighs 7.5 ounces, and measures 6.5 by 5.0 by 0.5 inches (HWD); it remains easy to slip into a bag or jacket pocket. The matte black back is sculpted, with a taper designed specifically for being held in one hand. There's a small "n" button below the screen, plus buttons on either side for flipping pages. The power button is at the top of the back, and the USB port is on the bottom for charging the Nook or loading outside content. On the right side, there's a micro-SD slot for adding up to 32GB more storage to the 2GB that's built in, which is enough for 1,000 books.

The Nook's 6-inch E Ink Pearl display's resolution is 800 by 600, and text and images alike look crisp and clear. Everything is still in shades of gray (16 of them, to be exact), so this isn't much of a photo viewer, but the screen is plenty crisp. In return for the grayscale, you get a screen that isn't prone to fingerprints (my Nook hardly showed a smudge after an hour of use), can be read in direct sunlight, and won't hurt your eyes. Touch interaction was reliable and responsive, though the responsiveness is limited slightly by E Ink's refresh rate, so there was always a beat between pressing a button and the screen changing. I got used to the lag quickly, but make sure you wait about a half-second before mashing a button again, thinking it didn't work.

User Interface and Connectivity
The new Nook technically runs Android 2.1, but that doesn't mean much—everything you see is all Barnes & Noble, and feels nothing like Android as we know it on cell phones and tablets. This reader is all about reading, so there's no browser, games, or apps to be found. When the Nook is off, it shows a rotation of pictures of authors and other literary things, much like the Kindle does. One small but nice addition is the ability to add your own photo as a screensaver, which both personalizes your device and makes it immediately recognizable as yours. Turning it back on and unlocking it, oddly, was the most annoying part of using the Nook; it frequently took me a few tries to drag the necessary line for the device to unlock.

There's no 3G modem built into the Nook anymore, just Wi-Fi. If you're out and about and need a new book, though, Barnes & Noble's partnership with AT&T means that you can step into a Starbucks or many other stores (like, of course, the 700 B&N stores) and download a book. When you're in a Barnes & Noble store, you can read entire books for free, and anywhere else there's Wi-Fi you'll only need to duck in for a minute: I downloaded the 731-page "These Guys Have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN," and from home screen to purchase to reading took about 30 seconds. Though there's no Web browser on the Nook, if it's necessary to connect to a Wi-Fi network a browser page will pop up, so you can accept terms of service or log in.

Navigation and Shopping
The Home screen features three sections: Reading Now, with your current book and place in it; New Reads, with the three things you most recently downloaded; and What to Read Next, which suggests books you might like based on your Nook Friends' suggestions (more on that in a second). One tap takes you to your current book, or your library, or to new content you'll like. You can also, from any screen, tap the open book icon in the top bar to jump straight to where you left off reading.

Barnes & Noble clearly worked hard to make sure you can access the things you'll use most without any unnecessary effort, and it makes the Nook a lot more fun to use. The only button you'll ever need to press is the "n" at the bottom of the screen, which pops up the Nook's primary menu: Home, Library, Shop, and Settings. Overall, the Nook's home screen is superior to the Kindle Touches's, which looks spartan in comparison.

The Barnes & Noble ebook store boasts over 2 million books, magazines, and newspapers. You can search for the book you want (an on-screen keyboard pops up when you need it, and works shockingly well, much better than the Kindle's hardware keyboard), search through various bestseller lists, or see curated lists from celebrities, Barnes & Noble buyers, and others. You can download a free sample (usually a chapter) of a book before you buy it, and read other people's reviews. Casual browsing and shopping is still a little cumbersome, since you'll have to download samples just to flip through a book like you would in a store, but it's as good a digital storefront as I've seen. If your library supports it, the Nook also allows you to borrow ePub books from the local library.

Any book you purchase or download goes into your online Barnes & Noble account, from which you can download it to Nook apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Blackberry, PC and Mac, and the Web. Your place in your book is always synced, so no matter where you read you'll always be in the right place. I don't like the Nook apps as much as the Kindle apps—they always feel busy, and over-animated—but they bring your content with you no matter what device you use.

Reading Experience and Page Turns
Reading has never been better on a digital device than on the new Nook. Take page-turns, for instance: You can turn the page forward by swiping from right to left, or tapping in the margin, or using the hardware buttons. If you need to flip quickly through a book, press and hold the page turn button, and it'll fly through pages until you stop. Since there are buttons on either side, you can literally hold the Nook any way you can think of—you can even change which hardware button flips forward or backward, depending on what you're comfortable with.

There are plenty of ways to control the display, too, from text size and font to line spacing and margin width. When you're reading, tapping the screen brings up a menu for those controls and more: You can use a scrubber to go quickly to a page, search for words or phrases within the text, see the table of contents, and more. Tap the screen again, and all of that information goes away, leaving you with only the page you're reading.

If you haven't tried a recent Nook or Kindle ($79, 4.5 stars) before, page turns are much less jarring than they used to be. Instead of flashing the screen on every turn (which makes the whole screen go black, and then re-load with the new page), the Nook Simple Touch only flashes every four to six pages, and between flashes just fades text from one page to the next. With the latest operating system upgrade, they're slightly faster than before, in a back to back comparison with an existing Nook Touch we had on hand from earlier this year. Current Nook Touch owners can upgrade to the new software for free, which is a nice bonus.

Battery Life, Getting Social, and Conclusions
You'll be able to read an awful lot of pages, too, since the Nook now boasts two-month battery life with Wi-Fi off, and three weeks with it on. It'd take a while to test that in the PCMag Labs, but even if Barnes & Noble's estimate is twice the actual result, this ebook reader isn't going to need a charge very often.

One of the biggest challenges for readers is figuring out what to read next. Barnes and Noble bets that your friends know that answer better than anyone else, so the social aspect of the Nook is heavily emphasized. Nook owners can recommend books, and even lend some, to other Nookers. called Nook Friends, the service also includes plenty of integration with Facebook and Twitter, which you can use to make recommendations, share favorite passages, and more.

The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch is the best budget ebook reader available right now. It's inexpensive, provides a fantastic reading experience, lasts a long time, and accesses the giant Barnes & Noble library. It also doesn't display ads, like the latest Kindle and Kindle Touch ($99, 4 stars) do (at their base prices, at least). The non-touch base Kindle is $20 less expensive than the Nook Simple Touch, although it's even smaller and lighter. Realize though, that the Nook Simple Touch is a device for readers, and readers will be thrilled with how easy it is to find and consume content. Every feature feels well-thought-out, every decision makes sense; for its features, design, and value, the refreshed Nook Simple Touch is a clear Editors' Choice.

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