Last Wednesday Barnes and Nobles started to deploy Nook, their electronic reader, to their brick and mortar stores. So I went into the store at 2200 Colorado Blvd today for a taste of the biggest competitor of Kindle2.
I have never used Kindle2. The only other ereader I used is Que - the ultra thin, business oriented ereader from Plastic Logic. So in this very short review, some of the opinions are drawn from comparison between Nook and Que.
Form factor: Nook weighs at about 11 ounce and has a 6" screen. It looks smaller than I expected - with the second to largest font display, it takes about 4 virtual page flips to flip over one actual paper page length of content. It's about as thick as an ELLE magazine. I like the thickness comparing to Que because it feels more like a book.
Screen: I do not know the technical difference behind a touch screen+E-Ink display and an E-Ink only screen. But the latter, though still much slower than a LCD, feels slightly more responsive, i.e. faster than the former. My guess the extra layer of touch screen has dragged the E-Ink display's response time. One thing I was disappointed with the Que is its slow response on its touch screen - this makes notes taking or even simply navigating between different functions a pain. But if you treat the Que only as a reader, that's no big deal. Nook, on the other hand, has an upper hand because the LCD touch screen is so much faster and accurate, although not as good as some of the touch screen phones.
E-Ink Display: sharp, clean. I will not hesitate to migrate from paper books to ereaders regarding for they are equally pleasant to the eyes. At this level, LCD screen is no competition with E-Ink, meaning Apple's iPad can hardly replace Nook as the e-reader of choice.
Extra Function: Nook is solely a reader. Therefore its wireless is only useful in purchasing newspapers, magazines, and books from on-line. It has an embedded mp3 player which allows you to listen to the music while reading.
Format support: epub and pdf is fully supported. Nook can check out books from the US public library system but to do that a user needs to: 1. have a local public library membership; 2. bring Nook to the library and connect the reader to computers at the library.
Sharing: One Barnes and Nobles account can link up to 4 Nooks - making it convenient for families. Also, users can borrow books from each other to up to 14 days.
Price: at $259, the same price as Kindle2, Nook users are able to enjoy lower book prices due to Amazon's failure to fix its e-book prices. However, it is unclear whether B&N will be able to secure the low prices in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment