My Full Nook Review

The e-reader “war” definitely got interesting this year with the introduction of the Barnes & Noble nook. After B&N’s announcement, Charlie Sorrel at wired.com went so far as to say that if you recently ordered a Kindle you would be in for “a giant dose of buyer’s remorse”. On paper the device looked formidable, a genuine contender for the title of “Kindle Killer”.

But as the first units were delivered and the initial reviews trickled in it started to become apparent that maybe it was a bit premature to declare the nook the king of the e-readers. That didn’t seem to dampen sales, as by that time pre-orders were given shipping dates well into the new year.

I received mine a few days before Christmas, and my wife was kind enough to let me open it right away instead of putting it under the tree. Within minutes of powering up the device the firmware update began, updating my device to firmware version 1.1.1. This is important to keep in mind, since some parts of my review may appear to conflict with some of the early reviews.

PACKAGING

One of the first complaints heard in other reviews was the packaging. Yes, it would appear that B&N packaged the device to survive a nuclear strike. But seriously, they included instructions on how to get the device out of its cocoon, and they worked. No problems unboxing for me. I was tempted to video my unboxing, but that felt just a bit too geeky for me. I’m just not that kind of blog!

SIZE

I was impressed by the size of the device. I already knew the height and width of it from the full size brochure, but I was still a bit surprised when I had it in my hand. It was just much smaller than I had envisioned. It was a little bit heavier than I was expecting, but I think it is the right weight. Anything less would feel to flimsy, any more and it would get to heavy.

Ergonomically it is comfortable to hold when reading. The back panel is shaped to give you something to hold on to. The page forward/back buttons are on both sides and in the right position to be comfortable. There is a button on the top that is used to wake the device up/put it to sleep or turn the device on/off depending on how long you hold the button. The bottom has speakers and a headphone jack, although I have not tried loading on audio file on it. I’ll write a separate review if/when I get around to trying the audio feature.

THE TOUCH SCREEN

Up until now we could have been describing the Kindle or Sony readers or any one of the other readers on the market. What really sets apart is the split screen, with an eInk display on top and a capacitive touch screen on the bottom. The touch screen is very nice. It is bright, at least until you turn the brightness down to conserve battery life. It is also fairly responsive, although there is some lag (more on that in the performance section below). Also, it is a finger print magnet, with a glossy surface that smudges easily. If you have a touch screen phone you are familiar with this.

An on screen keyboard is available on the touch screen. This was where I ran into a fat finger syndrome. I’ve never really thought of my fingers as fat, but I have a heck of a time typing on it. I think this is an issue with the capacitive screen, as I have similar problems typing on the iPod Touch. I don’t have these problems on my smartphone, which has a resistive screen. All the guru’s will tell you that capacitive is better, but when it comes to typing on screen I’m always hitting the wrong keys. Maybe it just takes practice.

A lot has been written about the awkwardness of navigating the top screen by touching the bottom one. In my opinion this is completely overblown. Yes, it is awkward at first. The first hour. After that it seems perfectly natural. I’ve never had the urge to touch the eInk screen; in fact, I’m a bit scared to touch it. Read on…

E-INK SCREEN

Unlike the touch screen, the eInk screen has more of a matte finish. The text is incredible. If you’ve never seen an eInk screen, let me just say that almost everything you’ve read about it is true. It does look like paper. I’ve been reading e-books for seven years on PDA’s and smartphones and the difference in reading between and LCD screen and eInk is like the difference between reading, well, a computer and a book. Did I say that it is incredible?

Well, while it is almost perfect there is one major drawback. The first time you turn the page on an eInk device you will see what I mean. Essentially, the screen goes black before it renders the next page. And unlike an LCD, the page turn is not instantaneous. I’ve timed it and most page turns take 1.5 – 2 seconds. Not too bad but you do notice it, especially at first. And it is not consistent. Sometimes it might take 4 or 5 seconds to change. Fortunately that is rare, but there is room for improvement here.

WIFI/3G

Another distinctive feature of the nook is its inclusion of wifi. Both the nook and Kindle have 3G data connections, which is speedy enough for book downloads but is definitely slower than wifi.

This brings me to an obvious question. Why wifi? One potential reason is that not everyone lives in an area with 3G coverage, although presumably the device can fall back on AT&T’s EDGE network which covers the vast majority of the U.S. population. Unlike the Kindle, there is no web browser on the nook. Wifi inclusion would suggest a data heavy application, which the nook doesn’t really have. Yet. Which is where I’m heading with this, I think that we are going to see new features to the nook in subsequent software updates.

Regardless, I encountered zero issues with either 3G connectivity or wifi. The 3G connection came on and connected when I first turned on the device, and the first time I turned on wifi it immediately recognized my home network (along with a number of my neighbors networks). I took the nook to my local B&N and it instantly recognized and connected to the store network. Nothing more to see here, moving along…

LIBRARY

Okay, now on to the bread and butter – reading. When I first started the nook and associated it with my B&N account it automatically imported e-books I already purchased into the device. There are several ways of viewing books loaded on the device. One is a list on the e-ink screen. The other is a cover view, reminiscent of the cover flow view on the iPod. Double tapping a cover will open a book.

One thing that took me a little while to figure out is that there are two libraries on the device – one for B&N purchased content, and one for side loaded (loaded via USB from your computer) content. I’m not sure I like this, since you have to look in two places for a book. But it is what it is, and it’s not really that big a deal either way.

Right now I probably have about 30 books or so spread out between my B&N library and side loaded content. B&N advertises that the nook can hold 1,500 e-books in internal memory and many, many more if you add a micro SD card. Even with only 30 books I can foresee problems navigating content as you fill the device up. It would be interesting to conduct a stress test on the nook to see how it performs as you fill it up. Trying to sort that many books is a potential nightmare, and my initial impression is that the file system (from a navigation standpoint) as is won’t stand up to that many books. I’m not ready to stress test the device yet, but if no one else steps up to the bat and beats me to it, I may try later. Stay tuned.

ONLINE STORE

The first thing my wife noticed when I turned the nook on for the first time is that “SHOP” is front and center on the menu. A not so subtle hint that B&N wants you to buy books. In addition to the nook I received a $100 B&N gift card from a family member for Christmas. So I went to bn.com and linked the gift card to my e-book account, picked up my nook, and went shopping.

Purchasing a book on the nook couldn’t be easier. Select the book and press “Buy”. The book downloads quickly via 3G, and almost instantaneously over wifi.

It’s easy, but is it fun? Sadly, the e-bookstore experience on the nook can never really replace the experience of shopping in a bookstore. No surprise there. But I found that it really didn’t even replace the experience of shopping for a book online. The nook store is pretty straightforward, presumably to conserve bandwidth and keep the experience quick. If you know what book you are looking for you can quickly locate it and buy it. But browsing books on the nook is not really enjoyable.

BRICK AND MORTAR STORE

Both joy and disappointment here. I took the nook to my local B&N to try out the in-store features. It quickly recognized the in-store wifi network. I quickly found the free cookie offer. Joy.

When I tried to browse books I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t read through entire books like B&N promised. I think that they said the feature wouldn’t be available until January, so I’ll give them a pass for the time being.

THE DAILY

Boring. That’s all I can say. A lot of potential with this, but none of the content has interested me so far (actually, Dave Barry’s pseudo instruction manual was pretty funny, but the rest of it is boring).

PERFORMANCE

I’ve been pleased, but not impressed, with the performance of the nook. Yes, there is a lag between the touch screen and the eInk screen. There is also a bit of lag when navigating the touch screen. But I’ve used a lot of gadgets, including Android phones, and it really isn’t any slower than those. It is not snappy like an iPhone, but it is on par with some Android phones like the Hero. Go figure, the nook is an Android based device.

BATTERY LIFE

Having used lots of gadgets, one thing I’ve learned is not to judge battery life too quickly. It normally takes a couple of weeks for a battery to “get in the groove”. That said, after a week of use I can say that while battery life is improving it isn’t exactly best in class. With the device in airplane mode and about maybe three hours of use a day the battery seems to discharge about 10%. Turn off airplane mode and that increases to about 20%. These are certainly unscientific tests, and I plan digging more on the subject in a future blog post.

ISSUES

I wish I could say that I haven’t had any issues, but I’ve had a few. I’ve been reviewing the e-book help board at the B&N website and know that none of my issues are unique to me, although some people have had more issues and some haven’t had any. (Generally speaking, most people probably wouldn’t go to the help board unless they had an issue, so using that as a guide to how many problems the nook may have isn’t very useful.)

The most troublesome issue I’ve had is with the device locking up. Twice in the week I’ve had the nook it has frozen on me. The first time was when changing the screensaver from the default “dead authors” pictures to cityscape pictures. The second time I was turning off the wifi. Surprisingly, there is no soft reset button on the nook. There is also no mention in the manual of any way to reboot the device (and since the manual is on the device, it wouldn’t do you much good when it freezes).

The first time it happened I went to the help board and read that if you plug the nook into your computer via USB it will fix the problem. Success, when I plugged in it rebooted. The second time it happened I was away from my computer, so I resorted to the tried and true method of randomly pushing buttons. What I found was when I pushed the left side page back button and the right side page forward button the device rebooted. Unfortunately, I was not able to replicate that result again after it restarted, so I don’t know if it was a fluke or if it is designed to reboot on the key combination.

Another problem I’ve had is with the nook losing my place in a book. Again, this has only happened twice to me, and the one thing common to both times was it occurred after I had the device plugged in to my computer via USB. Needless to say, I avoid unnecessarily connecting the nook to my PC now. And when I do I make sure I know where I was in my most recently read book (it helps to stop at a chapter break).

Synchronization. A BIG selling point for me was the ability to sync where I left off in a book on my nook with my phone. This is listed as a feature, but I have not been able to get anything to synchronize. I have the nook, a PC, a BlackBerry, and an iPod Touch. None of them will sync. I’m not sure if something is wrong or if B&N just hasn’t enabled this yet.

Finally, I have to say that as beautiful as the eInk display is it is also possibly the worst feature of the device. It’s sad, the display is so beautiful and easy to read. But the screen going black between page turns is extremely annoying. This is not the nook’s fault, and the Kindle and Sony (and any other reader using eInk) all suffer from the same problem. It is time for this technology to advance.

VERDICT

Despite the numerous headaches its given me, I can’t help but love my nook. Did Barnes & Noble blow their chance to deliver a real “Kindle Killer”? Yes. Did they deliver a device that can compete with the Kindle? In my opinion, yes. The nook is a real joy to use, but every now and then it will remind you that it is a 1.0 device. If you are in the market for a dedicated e-book reader the nook deserves a close look.