What you should know about Barnes & Noble Nook Color e-Book reader

Overview

Nook Color is Barnes & Noble’s multitouch full color e-Book reader. The eReader with a 7-inch display has been there in stores for a year now in battle with Amazon Kindle and Sony Readers. Barnes & Noble unveiled Nook Color in the fall 2010. The device is featured for its swift performance, Wi-Fi, Nookbook store, 8GB on-device storage and microSD slot for memory expansion. Some sources indicate the chance of an upgrade to Nook Color to make it more competitive with the upcoming Amazon Kindle Touch 3G and Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1.

Barnes & Noble Nook color e-book

Pricing and availability

Barnes & Noble sells Nook Color for $249. The eReader is available in most of global markets.

What’s great?

7-inch multitouch color display: Nook Color is one of the first eBook readers with full color display. You will be greatly enjoying eReading on the device’s multitouch display.

Huge content: You will have two million books, magazines, newspapers and interactive kids' books on Nook Color. The huge collection of content, of course, is the power of an eBook reader. Nook Color features Barnes & Noble’s Nookbook store for content streaming and downloading.

Smooth interface: Nook Color is with a nice user interface. You can quickly reach into the major features of the device such as Library, Web and Search with just a tap. You will be able to change the background image from your choice; the device already comes with a few default background images you can choose from.

Email and Web: Thanks to the Wi-Fi connectivity, you can access e-mail and search Web on Nook Color. The eReader also supports audio and MP3 playback.

Adobe Flash: It is a feature that makes Web browsing wonderful on any device. With Flash, you can watch videos and animations, and Web sites with similar contents with no trouble.

More magazines: Barnes & Noble now avails more magazines and periodicals on its eReader. People, Time, Fitness and Sports Illustrated are newly available on the device.

What’s not so great?

Nook Color offers only eight hours of battery life. It is not actually enough for an eBook reader that people may use for reading for continuous hours. As well, compared with its e-ink display rivals, eight hour is very less, indeed. Moreover, battery of the device is not user-replaceable. One another shortfall is that you won’t be able to access to full Android Market on the Barnes & Noble eReader. Only a few Android Market apps will work on the device. It has no 3G connectivity. You have to depend on Wi-Fi to connect Nook Color with the Internet. The 800 MHz ARM Cortex-A8-based TI OMAP3621 is not proficient enough to run the eReader.

Things to watch out for

Barnes & Noble Nook Color has been in stores for a year now. After its release in October 2010, the technology world has changed a lot. There is a huge demand for eBook readers in market at present. Amazon and Sony have responded to the call with new versions of their eReaders. Amazon is about to roll out an advanced Kindle Touch 3G and Sony is to come up with a Sony Reader Wi-Fi PRS-T1 in next months. Amazon also lunched a tablet version of its Kindle series, dubbed Kindle Fire for enhanced eReading. It is high time that Barnes & Noble should come up with an upgrade to its Nook Color with some multimedia and Web features.

Verdict

The eBook industry is witnessing sporadic growth these days. The numbers of people, who love reading books, magazines and newspapers on an eBook reader, have scaled up over the months. Certainly, there will be more demand for advanced eBook readers in the coming years. Amazon and Sony are to take advantage from this with their upcoming devices. Barnes & Noble can gain ground here with a fresh version to its Nook Color. Added with more multimedia and Web capabilities, Nook Color can raise big challenge to its budding competitors.