Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch eReader Review

The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch eReader may soon become the most popular eReader, beating out the perennial favorite Kindle by Amazon. Part of the conclusion will ultimately come down to personal taste. But objective features and price will play a role, too, as will the amount of content offered by their stores.

Certainly, the Nook has some seriously competitive features.

Screen: The Nook offers a 6 inch, black-and-white, E Ink display, with its new proprietary technology that refreshes pages quicker than the Kindle 3. Also features touchscreen navigation.

Navigation: That touchscreen can be used for turning pages (in addition to the Back and Forward buttons on the side) as well as for buying books and taking notes. In addition to other menu-navigation features, it lets you choose a book by its cover (a tiny color graphic). Users can also swap in and out a virtual keyboard, something the physical keyboard of the Kindle doesn’t allow.

Dimensions and Feel: The Nook Simple Touch is slightly squatter at an easy-to-hold 6.5 inches high x 5.0 inches wide x 0.5 inches thick, this device will fit comfortably in just about everyone’s hands. Weighing only 7.5 ounces, it is the lightest eReader currently on the market – about an ounce lighter than the Kindle 3. In addition, it has a rubberized, no-slip back which feels nice and substantial in your hands.

Storage: With its crisp, clear display, reading any of the up to 1,o00 books it will hold will cause no eye fatigue. And, fortunately, though the 2 GB storage is half the latest Kindle model, it can be expanded by a microSD card to hold up to 32GB, unlike its chief rival.

Connectivity: The Nook Simple Touch are wireless connectivty via Wi-Fi, and unlimited Wi-Fi access is available at all Barnes and Noble stores for free. Books download in mere seconds.

Battery life: With up to two months of (with Wi-Fi turned off) battery life, you won’t have to care about anyone else’s specs in this area. Except for the longest vacations, few will mind plugging it in once in a while. And, since the battery recharges in about 3 hours, it’s portable again pretty quickly. Of course, for the truly needy, one could purchase an additional battery. Unlike the Kindle, the one in the Nook is user-replaceable.

Books: Also unlike the Kindle, the Nook supports the “open source” format, ePub, along with its own PDB, Adobe’s PDF, and more. Supports library lending. There is support for a wide variety of graphic formats, including JPG, GIF, PNG, and BMP. With a screen this size, it won’t replace your laptop, but it’s useful for photo viewing and other purposes.

Also unlike the Kindle, you can read eBooks purchased from sites other than Barnes & Noble’s own. Viewing content originally stored on your PC, Mac, iPhone, and BlackBerry is possible, too. Added to that differentiating feature is the ability to (temporarily) loan your eBook to others with the B&N LendMe feature.

Click here to purchase the Nook Simple Touch eReader directly from Barnes & Noble.

The content possibilities are immense, too. Amazon offers over 700,000 books in its Kindle store, an impressive number to be sure. But the Barnes & Noble store adds to that number bringing it to 1 million by adding a large number of public domain books. That won’t be of any interest to most readers, but for those who love old, old books (out of copyright by virtue of age) it’s a nice feature. Naturally, that number also includes almost all the latest bestsellers.

Android: The Barnes and Noble Nook eReader doesn’t offer a ton of dazzling features that put it well beyond the Amazon Kindle. But the Nook uses Google’s Android operating system under the covers. So, it could add features later via Internet download/update. So, an already very good device could actually grow after your purchase into a great one. That sounds like a killer competitor to me.

Overall Recommendation

For those looking for a simple eReader, this has become our top recommendation. We like the feel of it in our hands, its light weight, its touchscreen navigation, and the virtually unlimited amount of book formats. At its current $140 price tag, it makes and excellent choice.

 Buy the Nook Simple Touch eReader.