Nook color: thanks, but no thanks, I passed

[anjirlly]

In fairness to the B&N rep, he did say that the dictionary didn't work with magazines. I persisted in poking around in the hope that he was mistaken.

[Care]

Originally Posted by anjirlly

In fairness to the B&N rep, he did say that the dictionary didn't work with magazines. I persisted in poking around in the hope that he was mistaken.

Oooooops, sorry B&N rep guy! Really though, when I went to look at Nooks the first time, I think I knew more than the rep and I didn't even own one yet. I guess that happens wherever you shop.

[nonanon]

I too bought a NookColor (NC) and returned it after 10 days. However, I had intended to keep it and I tried to like it more than I did but it might have been released before the firmware and OS was ready. My first impression was joyful but after a couple of hours my opinion dimmed.

First, most of the books I put on it were either purchased elsewhere or scanned and re-formatted with CaLibre specifically for the NC. Yet not only won't it let you rotate books to landscape format, it wouldn't change the background or font colors for most of my books. I don't want to read a bright white screen in bed at night and even turned way down the screen is still bright. This is a software problem since my old A81 can do this without a hiccup so it will likely be easily fixed.

Second, it really is heavy. Granted I'm comparing it to my Sony readers and my A81 and not to textbooks, but at nearly a pound it's not light enough to hold for long sessions. Comparing it to paper and ink books is futile, compared to other readers it's heavy and even compared to other tablets it's on the heavy end of things. It's also a bit larger than it needs to be, quite a bit wider than the Archos 70 which is a close competitor and probably my next purchase if they ever stock them locally. The width makes it just too big to fit into most of my jacket pockets, though the length is the same as the Archos 70 spec and my A81 and it's much slimmer than the A81.

Third, the screen is great, it's nice and bright with good resolution and color palette and the capacitive touch works fine. It lacks any kind of screen protector and I don't see why makers don't include at least a cheap protector that I can buy for about $1.25 from Hong Kong. Some don't like reading on an LCD but I prefer it most of the time for the backlight and the multi-functionality since I started a long time ago with Palms and a Tapwave Zodiac.

Battery life is in between negative and positive rating. It's not even close to an e-ink device but it's LCD so I didn't expect it to be. For an LCD it's not bad, not as good as my iPod Touch used to be but not bad for a tablet. Even if you use it only as a reader, under the hood it's a tablet with Android OS running with the battery life you should expect. If you're not using wifi it's easy to turn it off and that would likely almost double your battery life.

The browser is pretty basic and I'd like to try it with Opera Mini instead to get a better idea since it's quick and pages look very nice. The video player could use more work as well as many of the MP4 videos I converted specifically for the NookColor wouldn't play at all. I might have missed a setting but the software I used is usually reliable in that respect. The A81 will play nearly anything I put on an microSD card and the same is probably true of the Archos 70 so restricting the NC to a single restrictive format seems odd.

As a tablet it's somewhat crippled by the B&N OS but if you hacked it I think it would be great, other than the caveats above. A very big and colorful screen, higher resolution than the Archos 70 or A81, responsive capacitive touchscreen and it connected to my wifi although a bit slower than I'm used to with my A81. It has few hardware buttons so I'd assume they'd have to add some on-screen buttons like the Archos models have or it would suffer. For reading, video playback and web browsing this isn't a problem. When the new firmware comes out in January I might give it another look but by then I will probably have the Archos 70 instead. It offers streaming videos and music over my wifi, there may soon be a Netflix app for Android, and it's much lighter at 11 ounces. I still enjoy my Archos 605 at times so I have some affinity for the brand, too. The question will then be between the 250 gig hard drive model or the 8 gig flash, though even the 250 gig is lighter than the NookColor.

For me the main drawbacks are the extra width and the weight of the device. Everything else can be fixed in the next firmware upgrade, but it will still be a little too awkward to hold for long reading or browsing sessions. As I said, I expected to love it and initially I did. It's a sleek and shiny device that I found to be too heavy for it's purpose compared to it's competitors. The rest can be fixed with firmware. For now if you have to have one before the end of the year then the Nook is great. I don't think anyone here is bashing the NookColor, just pointing out a few perceived pitfalls to potential buyers.

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by SCION

I still don't know why apples are being compared to oranges.

Because oranges are faster...