Ereader: Nook
RSSWhen the Nook was released in November 2009, Barnes & Noble was clearly aiming for a Kindle-killer. Both ereaders sport six-inch diagonal, 16-shade grayscale eInk displays, free 3G access to their respective bookstores, and 2 GB internal storage?enough space for about 1,500 ebooks. And with the easy-on-the-eyeballs display, the reading experience on the devices is equally pleasant. Though the Nook is uncannily similar to the Kindle 2 that I reviewed in June 2009, there are some key differences:
The Nook has color. It does, but not on the reading screen. Instead, it has a Band-Aid-sized 3.5 inch, 480 x 144 pixel capacitive, color touchscreen at the bottom quarter of the unit. You can tap and swipe your way through full-color menus, cover thumbnails, or pull up a virtual keyboard for annotation, searching, and other input, without having to deal with one of the most criticized elements on the Kindle: a lower-third keyboard that many feel gets in the way. At first glance, the color screen's way sexier, but it's also a little sluggish and, since it's backlit, draws more power than the eInk screen. To save the battery, it quickly falls asleep when not in use. Unfortunately, since the touchscreen is essential to key navigation functions like going up and down within menus and opening stuff, you have to keep tap, tap, tapping to wake it back up.
The Nook is slower and clunkier... right? The device has a reputation for sluggishness, and that was my impression, too. Nook's navigation, which requires the use of both physical buttons and the touchscreen, felt counterintuitive. And every function, including downloading titles, seemed to take longer than on a Kindle. Moreover, the Barnes & Noble store was maddeningly difficult to browse.
But Barnes & Noble has a bigger downloadable selection, don't they? I hate to even go here, 'cause I don't have a definitive answer. Barnes & Noble claims over a million downloadable titles versus 540,000 on Amazon. However, critics say a lot of Barnes & Noble's titles are old scans, long in the public domain and not paid content. Both libraries are ample and growing fast. To me, the important question is how easily can you browse all that content? In that regard, Amazon has the decided edge.
The Nook has WiFi. Indeed, and that's a plus. Both devices offer free 3G access, but the Nook lets you access WiFi hotspots, providing the option in otherwise dead zones.
Nook's a promising ebook reader, with lots of little hardware advantages over the Kindle. Pop off the back cover, for example, and you'll find a user-serviceable battery and a microSD card slot. Given those extras, I can see why this ereader has its dedicated fans. Someday soon, I might be one of them. With just a few firmware tweaks, the Barnes & Noble Nook could evolve into the best eInk reader in its class.
Jeffrey Hastings (hastingj@howellschools.com) is a library media specialist at Highlander Way Middle School in Howell, MI.
