Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor Review

The Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor blurs the line between eReader and tablet with a 7" full color touch screen, Android 2.1 OS, web surfing, music streaming, games and over 2 million titles to read. Kevin Pereira and Candace Bailey review the $250 device for digital book lovers everywhere.

What You Need To Know

• The NOOKColor is pretty heavy and weighs about 1 lb, which is almost twice as much as the Kindle.
• The eReader is still lighter than the iPad and measures the same thickness as one.
• The NOOKColor features a full color touch screen, which obviously works much better.
• The touch is responsive, though not as responsive as an iPad.
• The new Nook runs on Android 2.1 along with the Barnes & Noble custom overlay, which turns it into a completely unique eReader experience.
• Our major complaint is that the whole interface feels a bit underpowered: pinching and zooming, navigating the shop and other processor heavy tasks are slower than we expected.
• The first Nook store had a pretty basic, boring design but Barnes & Noble did improve its features for the NOOKcolor.
• We liked the way the shop was organized and the full color screen adds a lot.
• It's easy to search for over 2 million books, magazines and newspapers.
• Though the NOOKcolor doesn't have an eInk display, reading on the device is not as uncomfortable as people might think.
• Though the LCD may not be as easy on the eyes as eInk, the screen is backlit.
• Users can change the font color so it's not just white on black, which should help if the brightness becomes bothersome.
• Barnes & Noble also tried to make magazine reading a more multimedia experience: the NOOKcolor has a thumbnail view so you can quickly flip through the magazine and each page is available to view by pinch and zooming.
• There's even an article view so you can read the text without the ads.
• Web browsing is a much better experience on the NOOKcolor: the browser looks great on the 7" color screen and there's also a pinch and zoom feature.
• The browser does not support Flash but it's still the best browser we've used on an eReader.
• Extra apps like Pandora, Sudoku games and social networking integration are included and Barnes & Noble plans to add more in the future.

Price

• $250

Rating

• 4 Seals of Approval out of 5. (How do we rate gadgets?)
• Though the NOOKcolor has a few interface flaws, it's the richest multimedia experience we've seen on an eReader.

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