If you have a brick-and-mortal Barnes and Noble nearby, spending some time hands-on with nook is worth the drive. Since most reviewers have complained about nook’s response (or lack thereof) and interface woes, open an eBook or two and thumb through some pages. Access a new chapter header. Play with settings. The folks at my local Barnes and Noble were helpful and happy to allow me quality time with the eReader. Obviously, you mileage may vary.
For some, the local Barnes and Noble isn’t an option or if you’ve had enough of the holiday crowds, you’re likely in the market for nook reviews. I’ve compiled a list of reviews along with an excerpt from each review. Each listing also specifies whether the review features Text, Photos, Video, or a combination.
Most of the reviews pit nook versus Kindle and Barnes and Noble versus Amazon. If you haven’t committed to an eReader yet, please keep in mind that 2010 is bursting with new eReaders. If you don’t like what you read and what you see, you can always wait for other options. (Although this is a nook-based site, my job isn’t to sway you to purchase a nook. That’s Barnes and Noble’s.)
CNET: Text/Photos/Video
“The bottom line: The Nook’s extra features make it a worthy and enticing alternative to the Kindle, but Barnes & Noble will have to work out the device’s kinks before it can reach its full potential.”
Consumer Reports Blog: Text
“Trouble is, it’s hard to know which problems will be fixed, and which may require waiting for the second-generation Nook. For what it’s worth, slowish page turns on the first Kindle were not remedied until the current, second-generation version of the device.”
Engadget: Text/Photos
“Ultimately, the best addition here isn’t Google Books or the free WiFi; it’s the Barnes & Noble book buying experience. If there’s one thing the company knows how to do, it’s sell books, and that’s clear when using the Nook to browse or purchase titles. The on-device experience shines, and knocks the nearest competition around handily. All this other stuff? Just icing on the cake.”
Entertainment Weekly: Text
“Verdict: While it’s not perfect — or even markedly superior to the Kindle – the Nook is a sleek, easy to use device with a lot of potential.”
Gizmodo: Text/Photos
“Still, I need to get this out of the way: The second screen is not a sudden and miraculous cure for what ails ebook readers. It may prove to be, but B&N’s current implementation is conservative. As yet, there are too few occasions on the Nook when I notice an LCD feature and say “Kindle can’t do that.” In fact, the Kindle development team hasn’t been sitting on their asses—the latest firmware makes Kindle more sprightly than ever, with subtle but awesome user-interface improvements. But Barnes & Noble is itself promising round-the-clock enhancing, optimizing and debugging over the next few months, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were three or four updates pushed through the Nook by March—the first possibly before Christmas.”
New York Times: Text/Photos/Video
“Worse, the touch screen is balky and nonresponsive, even for the Nook product manager who demonstrated it for me. The only thing slower than the color strip is the main screen above it. Even though it’s exactly the same E Ink technology that the Kindle and Sony Readers use, the Nook’s screen is achingly slower than the Kindle’s. It takes nearly three seconds to turn a page — three times longer than the Kindle — which is really disruptive if you’re in midsentence.”
Slashgear: Text/Photos/Video
“Locked-down ebook formats (not to mention hardware investment) strongly dissuade platform hopping, and while Barnes & Noble offer bestsellers and new releases at $9.99, together with half a million free ebooks, it could still be an expensive transition. We can’t see that situation improving any time soon, but if we had to opt into any ebook user experience on the market right now, we’d opt for the Barnes & Noble nook.”
Technologizer Text/Photos (same review as PC World)
“Oddly enough, Barnes & Noble’s e-reader is the only one of the three to have nailed the most basic input action of all: turning pages. The Kindle’s left- and right-side buttons vary in a confusing manner, and the Sony has sliver-like page turning buttons on the left side of the case. But the Nook has easy-to-press, identical forward and backward buttons on both sides of the screen, making it as inviting to southpaws as it is for righties. (Technically speaking, they’re not buttons but rather pressure-sensitive areas of the case that click when you press them.)”
Washington Post: Text
“For those reasons, in the end, having two screens in play simultaneously was a jarring experience: It meant that my eyes had to dart continually from the too-bright lower screen to the more muted, easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink screen. The auto-brightness feature lowers the brightness, but not enough; I had to dial the brightness down manually to as low as 4 to 10 percent to get to passable contrast with the E-Ink screen above.”
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