Pros: Good readability, 7-inch color touch screen, Built-in Wi-Fi, web browser, Reads ePub, PDF and Word files, Plays videos and audio
Cons: No 3G connectivity, Few apps, Can't play Flash videos, Screen glare in bright sunlight, Short battery life
The Nook Color is more than just an eReader, but to be fair it’s not even a complete tablet. It’s a 7-inch color LCD, the Android operating system, a reading-centric UI, and a "curated" set of apps from which to choose. If one cuts the arbitrary labels and witty polishing of words, what one would have is an eReader that does extremely well at its primary purpose while offering sufficient extras to validate the price. Ever since the ebook reader roar began, consumers have been pleading for color displays, which they finally got with Barnes & Noble’s The Nook Color with a 7-inch color LCD display to satisfy this need. Nevertheless, one looking for a full-color reading experience that makes the most of graphic media like magazines and children's books, the Nook Color delivers.
The Nook Color is of the same dimension and geometry of the original Nook, which measures 8.1 x 5.0 x 0.48 inches to the Nook's 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches and maintaining the latter's rounded rectangular design. Though, the similarities end here. The Nook Color has a more classy air, possibly due to the graphite color, the metallic feel of the casing, or the big, beautiful screen in front. The original Nook isn't graceless, but the Nook Color is definitely the more eye-catching of the two. The Nook Color doesn't use monochrome E-Ink for its reading screen, like the Amazon Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi or the original Barnes and Nobles Nook. Instead, it has a 7-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel LCD that can show 16 million colors. Talking of downsides, the most significant is the battery life, weak compared with most E-Ink-based ebook readers. The screen is also more reflective than E-Ink displays, even though one would able to read the Nook Color outside in broad daylight without much problem. The Nook Color comes with 8GB of memory, enough for about thousands of books, or magazines. With a micro SD card, storage can be extended up to 40GB.
The Nook Color runs a greatly modified version of Android 2.1. Barnes & Noble did an admirable job of crafting the UI for the Nook Color's purpose as an eReader and compensating for the lack of the usual Android buttons with sensitive controls and icons. All other navigation comes via the touch screen. Tap the bottom of the display, and a software menu pops up with Library, Shop, Search, Extras, Web, and Settings. The Library is the main repository of all your books, magazines, and newspapers. Shop sends you to the Barnes & Noble Store, but you have to be connected to a Wi-Fi network to get there, the Nook Color lacks 3G connectivity. Extras is the holding place for applications like Contacts, LendMe, Pandora, and other Android Apps that Barnes & Noble will port to the Nook Color. A button is always there on your screen to take you back to the last visited page or book. Reading on the Nook Color is very intuitive. It allows to move forward or back in books by swiping the screen or tapping, and the display is pretty quick to respond.
It allows you to enjoy reading with your personal stuff and loading on with your personal images as well. Adding to it to, it also gives access for PDF and ePub files, the Nook supports JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP files. Viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, makes it a complete stunner. The device supports MP4 video, although the company says it will be a few months before video-enhanced content becomes available for the Nook Color.
The Nook Color lets you share quotes, and even entire books with your friends. Connect the device to your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, and you can clip passages from within books and post them to the Web. The Barnes & Noble Ebook Store has more than 2 million books. The company signed up a host of newspapers and magazine providers, including The Times, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, National Geographic, and most importantly, PC Magazine. Magazines come through with the layout and images intact. You can read them as a full page or in article view, which re-flows an individual story into a more readable template. In spite of using Android 2.1, The Nook Color does not access the Android marketplace directly, but Barnes and Noble ports some Android apps to the platform, company plans to keep these apps in the Extras section and keep the Nook Color focused on reading.
The browser allows you to surf internet with a very high speed of experience. There are some whims, like tapping to zoom in on a page, instead of the more intuitive pinch-and-zoom functionality. Still, when you are using the browser, it might give you a feeling of holding a tablet and not an ebook reader. The battery performance for Nook is a bit downward; The Company says it will last up to 8 hours. If required for more than a few hours a day, one should keep on charging daily. This is much better than the color-screened Sharper Image Literati's merely 4-hours of battery life.
Cons: No 3G connectivity, Few apps, Can't play Flash videos, Screen glare in bright sunlight, Short battery life
The Nook Color is more than just an eReader, but to be fair it’s not even a complete tablet. It’s a 7-inch color LCD, the Android operating system, a reading-centric UI, and a "curated" set of apps from which to choose. If one cuts the arbitrary labels and witty polishing of words, what one would have is an eReader that does extremely well at its primary purpose while offering sufficient extras to validate the price. Ever since the ebook reader roar began, consumers have been pleading for color displays, which they finally got with Barnes & Noble’s The Nook Color with a 7-inch color LCD display to satisfy this need. Nevertheless, one looking for a full-color reading experience that makes the most of graphic media like magazines and children's books, the Nook Color delivers.
The Nook Color is of the same dimension and geometry of the original Nook, which measures 8.1 x 5.0 x 0.48 inches to the Nook's 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches and maintaining the latter's rounded rectangular design. Though, the similarities end here. The Nook Color has a more classy air, possibly due to the graphite color, the metallic feel of the casing, or the big, beautiful screen in front. The original Nook isn't graceless, but the Nook Color is definitely the more eye-catching of the two. The Nook Color doesn't use monochrome E-Ink for its reading screen, like the Amazon Kindle 3G + Wi-Fi or the original Barnes and Nobles Nook. Instead, it has a 7-inch, 1024-by-600-pixel LCD that can show 16 million colors. Talking of downsides, the most significant is the battery life, weak compared with most E-Ink-based ebook readers. The screen is also more reflective than E-Ink displays, even though one would able to read the Nook Color outside in broad daylight without much problem. The Nook Color comes with 8GB of memory, enough for about thousands of books, or magazines. With a micro SD card, storage can be extended up to 40GB.
The Nook Color runs a greatly modified version of Android 2.1. Barnes & Noble did an admirable job of crafting the UI for the Nook Color's purpose as an eReader and compensating for the lack of the usual Android buttons with sensitive controls and icons. All other navigation comes via the touch screen. Tap the bottom of the display, and a software menu pops up with Library, Shop, Search, Extras, Web, and Settings. The Library is the main repository of all your books, magazines, and newspapers. Shop sends you to the Barnes & Noble Store, but you have to be connected to a Wi-Fi network to get there, the Nook Color lacks 3G connectivity. Extras is the holding place for applications like Contacts, LendMe, Pandora, and other Android Apps that Barnes & Noble will port to the Nook Color. A button is always there on your screen to take you back to the last visited page or book. Reading on the Nook Color is very intuitive. It allows to move forward or back in books by swiping the screen or tapping, and the display is pretty quick to respond.
It allows you to enjoy reading with your personal stuff and loading on with your personal images as well. Adding to it to, it also gives access for PDF and ePub files, the Nook supports JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP files. Viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, makes it a complete stunner. The device supports MP4 video, although the company says it will be a few months before video-enhanced content becomes available for the Nook Color.
The Nook Color lets you share quotes, and even entire books with your friends. Connect the device to your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, and you can clip passages from within books and post them to the Web. The Barnes & Noble Ebook Store has more than 2 million books. The company signed up a host of newspapers and magazine providers, including The Times, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, National Geographic, and most importantly, PC Magazine. Magazines come through with the layout and images intact. You can read them as a full page or in article view, which re-flows an individual story into a more readable template. In spite of using Android 2.1, The Nook Color does not access the Android marketplace directly, but Barnes and Noble ports some Android apps to the platform, company plans to keep these apps in the Extras section and keep the Nook Color focused on reading.
The browser allows you to surf internet with a very high speed of experience. There are some whims, like tapping to zoom in on a page, instead of the more intuitive pinch-and-zoom functionality. Still, when you are using the browser, it might give you a feeling of holding a tablet and not an ebook reader. The battery performance for Nook is a bit downward; The Company says it will last up to 8 hours. If required for more than a few hours a day, one should keep on charging daily. This is much better than the color-screened Sharper Image Literati's merely 4-hours of battery life.
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