The Nook with Glowlight

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

Which brings up an interesting question: What do you tell people the H. stands for when you don't want to divulge your real name?

Hornblower.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I agree, the only way to judge is to see for yourself. Good thing I have a B&N in my neighborhood!

eP

Yeah, trying to judge the quality of an e-ink screen from a photo displayed on an LCD screen is a lot like trying to judge the quality of color TVs by watching them on a black and white TV.

Or trying to judge the quality of an HDTV by watching it on a SDTV, for people too young to have seen a B&W TV. (I'm not sure what to do for people too young to have seen a SD TV...like trying to judge the quality of a 3D TV by watching it on a 2D TV?.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

It's not as if anyone needs to rush out and buy another e-reader before it's actually carried in stores.

What about people who are CDO?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Phogg

What about people who are CDO?

CDO? What does that mean?

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by HarryT

CDO? What does that mean?

It's likely a typo, he meant OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder...

[howyoudoin]

It's OCD, only with the letters in the right order, as they should be.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

It's OCD, only with the letters in the right order, as they should be.

[ucfgrad93]

Engadget has their review of the new Nook up.

Originally Posted by Engadget.com

Still, it's clear certain sacrifices were made to accommodate this new feature. A new anti-glare layer has been applied to the display, to maintain the device's readability in direct sunlight -- something Amazon and Barnes & Noble will happily remind you is quite difficult on tablets with garden-variety LCD screens. And indeed it does a good job of cutting the glare -- in fact, held up to the light, the new Nook is a bit less reflective than its predecessor. It's hard to say whether it's this added layer or some other bit of hardware, but when placed next to the original Nook with identical pages on the screen, there's significantly less contrast with the text here. The darkness of the e-ink on the new Nook is a bit uneven across the page as well. This is a pretty big bummer -- the crisp contrast of E Ink has long been a selling point of these devoted readers, promising replication closer to physical books than tablets can offer. On the new Nook, the page looks a bit unevenly printed. It's another one of those things you might miss at first glance, but that you can't really un-see once you've had a chance to see the two devices next to each other.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/24/n...wlight-review/

[toronado]

Thanks for posting that link. This poorer contrast thing is certainly a non-awesome development.

[Andrew H.]

The review on The Verge said something similar about the contrast and crispness of the text - but the review didn't include a comparison with, say, the Sony 600, so it's hard to know to what degree the text isn't crisp.

I didn't really get the impression that either of the reviewers were particularly familiar with e-book readers in general, though.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/24/29...owlight-review

The GlowLight Nook has a screen protector on top of the display, though, which makes text appear slightly softer and lower-contrast than on last year's model. I didn't notice until I held the GlowLight Nook next to last year's Nook and a Kindle, and even though all three use the same display technology the GlowLight Nook's text didn't look quite as sharp. It's a fine screen, but it's nothing remarkable anymore, and I'm starting to wish for a slightly higher-res display that renders text a little more sharply.

[toronado]

Thanks for posting the Verge link. Sounds like it's the GlowLight Nook's built-in screen protector which is causing the difference in contrast and crispness.

After reading this review, I'm not any more interested in the Nook STR than I was when it first came out, and in fact even less interested now, even with the light.

[soondai]

I checked it out in the store tonight and could see a small difference in contrast, but did not notice a lack of crispness.

I say that with one caveat though: it certainly appeared to me that if you left the glowlight on a low setting in the lit room the contrast was better than a typical pearl screen.

If I bought one of these (have no need right now) I would likely leave the light on at about 25 percent most or all of the time. Sure you'd have to charge it more, but it looked very good to me at that setting in a lit room

[toronado]

Originally Posted by soondai

I say that with one caveat though: it certainly appeared to me that if you left the glowlight on a low setting in the lit room the contrast was better than a typical pearl screen.

If the contrast is better with the glowlight set to 25% brightness, does it follow that the contrast would improve further still with the glowlight set higher?

I suppose I'll need to look at one of these for myself to judge it.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by soondai

I checked it out in the store tonight and could see a small difference in contrast, but did not notice a lack of crispness.

I say that with one caveat though: it certainly appeared to me that if you left the glowlight on a low setting in the lit room the contrast was better than a typical pearl screen.

If I bought one of these (have no need right now) I would likely leave the light on at about 25 percent most or all of the time. Sure you'd have to charge it more, but it looked very good to me at that setting in a lit room

It sounds like the light makes the background gray appear whiter.

[toronado]

Originally Posted by Fbone

It sounds like the light makes the background gray appear whiter.

Lots of direct sunlight will make eReader backgrounds look less grey and more white, right? I'm wondering if this is the same effect on the Nook with GlowLight, using an artificial light source (the glowlight), or if there something altogether different going on having to do with the way the different layers in the construction of the GlowLight Nook allow natural light to enter vs the way natural light hits the non-glowlight nook. Sorry for the bad grammar.