Skip to main content
  • Introduction

  • Front

  • Back

  • Sides

  • In the Box

  • Handling

  • Screen

  • Indoor & Outdoor Use

  • Legibility

  • Reflectance

  • Screen Size & DPI

  • Battery Life

  • Controls

  • Connectivity

  • Battery Life

  • Reading Books

  • Buying Books

  • eBook Formats

  • Newspapers & Magazines

  • Barnes & Noble Nook Touch

  • Amazon Kindle Touch

  • Conclusion

  • Introduction
  • Front
  • Back
  • Sides
  • In the Box
  • Handling
  • Screen
  • Indoor & Outdoor Use
  • Legibility
  • Reflectance
  • Screen Size & DPI
  • Battery Life
  • Controls
  • Connectivity
  • Battery Life
  • Reading Books
  • Buying Books
  • eBook Formats
  • Newspapers & Magazines
  • Barnes & Noble Nook Touch
  • Amazon Kindle Touch
  • Conclusion

Introduction

Front

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Back

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Sides

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In the Box

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Your {{product.model}} comes packaged with assorted documentation, wall charger, and USB cable.

Handling

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Given that previous Barnes & Noble eReaders that this unit is based off of are very light, it's not surprise that the added weight of a few LEDs doesn't really weigh it down any more: the unit is very easy to hold. The contoured edges and grippy bezel allow you to easily hold your eReader with one hand or two, and you can easily control your eReader with the IR grid touchscreen, or by using the hidden buttons on the front.

Screen

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The {{product.model}} is built around a 3.5625 x 4.8125 inch eInk Pearl screen, which uses an IR grid touchscreen as its main interface, and is ringed by LEDs inside the case to light up the screen. The IR grid is as responsive as can be expected, though the refresh rate of the eInk screens is typically under 10Hz, meaning page changes will be slower than they are on tablets.

Indoor & Outdoor Use

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While eReaders with eInk screens are typically fantastic in direct sunlight, where they fall short most often is in low light. For this, the {{product.model}} has a built-in "glow light," which shines an inoffensively bright light onto the screen so text and illustrations can be visible even in the darkest lighting conditions. For those of you who like night reading, this is a huge plus.

NOTE: The images above are shot with a variety of lighting sources, which may cause some color shift.

Legibility

As always, eReaders with eInk Pearl screens and an appropriate resolution look much like ink on a printed page should, and the Nook SimpleTouch with Glow Light is no different in this regard. High marks here.

Reflectance

Like most other eReaders with eInk screens, the Nook SimpleTouch with Glow Light does not reflect a large total of light, nor is the reflection pattern very sharp. This is a huge plus, as sharp reflection patterns can get very distracting, especially in brighter lighting conditions.

Screen Size & DPI

As previously mentioned, the Nook SimpleTouch with Glow Light has a 3.5625 × 4.8125 inch eInk Pearl screen, with resolution of 800 by 600, giving it a dots-per-inch (DPI) of 167, on the high end for an eReader. You will have no resolution issues here.

Battery Life

While the Nook SimpleTouch with Glow Light does manage to last well beyond the 24 hour mark with continuous reading of eBooks without the Glow Light, if you do enable the light for night reading, you’ll find that your battery life plummets to about 10 hours. This result is not terribly surprising, as eReaders do not have a big battery, as they do not generally require much juice to display a page.

Making light, however, does burn a lot of battery power. If you’re looking to maximize your battery life between charges, we suggest trying to limit the time you use your glow light. You’re not going to drain your battery life instantaneously by leaving it on, but your eReader will be capable of going for much longer without a recharge.

Controls

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The controls to the {{product.model}} are identical to the Nook Simple Touch. To start, the IR grid touchscreen can be used to navigate menus, flip pages with a swipe or tape of a finger, and type in searches. The top buttons on either side of the unit are used to turn pages forward, and the bottom ones are used to flip back a page. In addition, the n-shaped button on the bottom of the front will call up a menu, or if you hold it for two seconds, will enable the glow light.

The controls on the top right side of the iPad body: volume, lock and power.

Connectivity

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In addition to the standard 802.11n wireless card in the {{product.model}}, you can also port files to your system over the microUSB cable. You can also load up a microSD card with files you'd like to view on your {{product.model}}. This is a big plus, but because the eReader can only read eBooks, and not play back audio, this seems to be a feature more for archival purposes.

Here we see a Lightning dock in its natural habitat.

Battery Life

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While the {{product.model}} does manage to last well beyond the 24 hour mark with continuous reading of eBooks without the Glow Light, if you do enable the light for night reading, you'll find that your battery life plummets to about 10 hours. This result is not terribly surprising, as eReaders do not have a big battery, as they do not generally require much juice to display a page.

Making light, however, does burn a lot of battery power. If you're looking to maximize your battery life between charges, we suggest trying to limit the time you use your glow light. You're not going to drain your battery life instantaneously by leaving it on, but your eReader will be capable of going for much longer without a recharge.

Reading Books

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Reading books on the {{product.model}} is a rewarding experience as far as eReaders go, because not only is the unit easy to hold, but it's exceptionally easy to control via the IR grid touchscreen. You can control it much like you would on a tablet, or you can use the buttons; whichever is easiest for you.

The iBooks program offers a range of controls for font and text size

If you decide that you need a larger font size, or different font altogether, you can access the menu to change either. There are 7 different font sizes to choose form, ranging from tiny, to ridiculously big.

Buying Books

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Buying books on the {{product.model}} is a relatively simple task. Once you've created a Barnes & Noble account complete with billing information and link it to your device, you will be able to access the store at any time that you have a WiFi connection. Once inside the eBook store, all you have to do is find the title you would like to purchase, and tap the "buy" or "download" icons. Your account will be billed automatically, and your download will begin immediately after your card clears.

Books can be purchased on the iPad through the iTunes store

eBook Formats

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Possibly the only drawback to the {{product.model}} is the fact that it can only handle an extremely limited number of eBook formats, and a few image formats. Though you can always use a converter program like Calibre to convert your library to the ePub format, it's still difficult to reach the same level of available eBooks on the Barnes & Noble storefront in comparison to that of Amazon.

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Newspapers & Magazines

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You can also purchase issues and subscribe to periodicals of your choice through the Nook store. Simply tap the "purchase" icon on the main page to be taken to a selection of the periodicals available to you. Once you've found the issue or periodical you'd like to buy/subscribe to, you can tap the appropriate icon, and your account will be billed automatically. Once your card clears, your downloads (if applicable) will begin.

The New York Times is available on the iPad through their own app

Barnes & Noble Nook Touch

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Device & Specs

Both devices are virtually identical in every way, except for the fact that the {{product.model}} has a lighting system to enable night reading. That's basically it. Both have a microSD card slot, both have the same screen size and relatively similar battery life. The {{product.model}} does cost roughly $40 more, however.

Screen

Both eReaders have identical screens outside of the LED array of the {{product.model}}.

Battery

Because of the added hardware, the {{product.model}} has slightly worse (but still excellent) battery life.

eReader

Both tablets are about identical as eReaders, but the {{product.model}} can be seen at night.

Amazon Kindle Touch

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Device & Specs

Despite their separate branding and different cases, both devices are remarkably similar, as they have virtually identical screens, IR grid touchscreen, extremely long battery life, low reflectivity, wireless, and a microUSB port. That said, the light and the microSD card on the {{product.model}} is a huge hardware advantage.

Screen

Both tablets are about identical as eReaders, but the {{product.model}} can be seen at night.

Battery

Both have spectacular battery life.

eReader

As eReaders, the Nook and Kindle touch are very different machines. Sure, from a hardware standpoint they're very similar, but the support each gets from its respective eBook store is vastly different. While the {{product.model}}'s store isn't bad, it's hard to top Amazon, as it's currently king of the eBook market. On top of that, users with Kindle devices also have access to thousands of titles through a consortium of 11,000+ participating local libraries to borrow on their eReaders. While the hardware to the {{product.model}} may be superior, the Kindle isn't going down without a fight.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an eReader with the best hardware, currently the {{product.name}} is it. While it's not a radically different design than previous eReaders, the addition of an LED lighting system offers bookworms who like to read at night an affordable solution to a screen that relies on ambient light to be seen. While this should probably have been around a long time ago, it's a sensible addition to the eReader archetype, and from a device standpoint, there is no better eReader on the market than the {{product.name}}.

But hold on: there's more than hardware that counts towards how well an eReader works for you, and in this case it's a big deal. While the Nook has some of the best support from its store on the market, it still lacks in some areas like book lending to compete with the current heavyweight Amazon. Still, if you can convert your files using free software, you can easily port them to the {{product.name}} no sweat.

If you're looking for an eReader that has has the potential to be something more, as well as enable you to read your eBooks at night, the {{product.name}} is probably a good fit for you. While there isn't as good lending support on the Nook, avid readers will appreciate an eReader that can be used in any light.

Meet the tester

Chris Thomas

Chris Thomas

Staff Writer, Imaging

@cthomas8888

A seasoned writer and professional photographer, Chris reviews cameras, headphones, smartphones, laptops, and lenses. Educated in Political Science and Linguistics, Chris can often be found building a robot army, snowboarding, or getting ink.

See all of Chris Thomas's reviews

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