On Monday, Jenn Lowell brought you a roundup of the rumors that were running wild regarding a new color version of Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader. After an image of the device was prematurely posted on the retailer’s site, it was just a matter of waiting for the official announcement. Now that’s happened and we can look at Nook Color as a real device and consider what kind of an audience it will have.
Nook Color is much more a reaction to the iPad than another generation of a device competing with Amazon’s Kindle. It has a 7-inch LCD touchscreen with a 178-degree viewing angle. It’s 8 inches tall by 5 inches wide and about half an inch thick, weighing in at just under a pound. It’s powered by an Android OS, but B&N is keeping a tight reign over the device, so until it’s inevitably jailbroken it does not have full access to all Android apps. It ships with 8GB of built-in memory and can add up to 32GB with a microSD card. Connectivity is through Wi-Fi (802.11 b, g, or n), with free access offered in Barnes & Noble stores as with the original Nook. With the wireless turned off, the battery is billed as lasting up to 8 hours.
Stepping away from a reading-only role, it has the ability to check email or surf the web, and play both MP3 audio and MP4 video. Also included are several apps for entertainment and productivity including the ability to create, read and edit Microsoft Office format documents.
So finally we have the question many E Ink fans ask: Does an eReader need to be color? The answer to that is really in how you plan to use it. Do you want a device strictly for reading novels, or do you want something that can capably handle newspapers, magazines, children’s books, etc., with the acknowledged trade-off of a less sharp and more eye-taxing display (and significantly shorter battery life) than E Ink?
Speaking of children’s books, Barnes and Noble is launching a category of books called Nook kids, offering interactive versions of classic children’s books. Parents are likely to immediately see the appeal of having a number of their kids’ favorite books in the same small form factor that pleases adult readers.
The Nook Color is scheduled to begin shipping November 19, at a price of $249. At half the cost of the iPad, is it the color tablet you’ve been waiting for? Let us know in the comments.
I’d love a color reader which weighs less than my beloved iPad. But I’d need it to be able to run the kindle app at the very least. Especially since it seems you can’t buy b&n books from outside the Usa.
No e-ink… not interested. Would rather have an iPad than this.
If it was e-ink with a color screen as a layer then I’d be interested…. but I stare at enough LCDS all day as it is…
Ahhhh I just went through a weeks worth of getting my e-books sized for the original nook. gahhhhhhh :pounds head on desk:
Interesting piece of hardware.
How do you enter data? Is the entire screen touch-enabled? I just may have to place a pre-order for this baby…
I’m intrigued! I like that its running on Android OS and that it can do pretty much everything. However, just like the iPad won’t replace my kindle, this won’t either. The E-ink technology is far superior to LCD for reading books. It’s perfect for movies, games and other travel related activities, but I’ll still read books on my kindle.