Nook Color: My Review

I am a sucker for gadgets. I love them. However, when the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook came out, I resisted. I swore there was nothing that could compete with the feeling of a book in your hands. Being able to mark my page with my favorite bookmark–the one handmade by my youngest daughter–was something I just couldn’t get with a piece of hardware.

So lately when I’ve been hearing about everyone asking about–and getting– their Kindles and Nooks for Christmas, I tuned them out. I wasn’t asking for one!! I was resisting!!

Being someone that always ends up following what everyone else is doing sooner or later, it will come as no surprise that on a recent Friday night date night, my husband and I ended up strolling towards Barnes & Noble. We had some extra time to kill before our movie started, and while he would have much rather spent his time shopping for fishing lures at Scheel’s… eventually my love of book-browsing won out.

Damn those people at Barnes and Noble for putting that Nook display RIGHT AT THE FRONT DOOR. Like they can just convince people to be swayed by the color and the prettiness and and the ooohhh… they have cases, too?

I looked at them for approximately 10 minutes, listened to the sales person and 2 customers rant and rave over how super, AWESOME, and AMAZING the Nook is…

…and it was the easiest sale they probably ever made.

AND my husband was a happy camper because he can cross “Buy wife a Valentine’s Day gift” off of his To-Do list.

It was a win-win situation for all of us.

So, now that I have spent every single waking minute of my free time reading (seriously, I’ve read like 4 books in a WEEK, people!), and my kids and I have sufficiently played around with this baby enough to get a feel for what it can and can’t do, here’s my review on the Barnes & Noble Nook Color:

PROS:
1. FREE BOOKS – There is an endless supply of FREE BOOKS to read. In nearly every category we have searched (and trust me, we have tested it) there are at least a handful of free books that come up in the search queue.

2. WiFi - The Nook Color has Wifi, which is awesome. I can get on my laptop at home, buy a book on the Barnes & Noble website, and when I turn on my Nook, THE BOOK IS ALREADY THERE. I don’t have to plug it in to the computer, I don’t have to download it, nothing.. it’s just there. No it’s not magic, baby. It’s WI-FI.

3. The “Shelves”: You can create different shelves for your books. I didn’t think it was a big deal at first until my kids got ahold of the Nook and wanted to download some books on it. So when I go to the “Library” screen I see a list of LOTS of books we keep on there, but instead I go to the “Shelves” screen and see three neat shelves labeled with my name, and each of my daughter’s names. We each keep the current book we are reading and the book we plan on reading next.

4. Ease of reading: I can sit in just about any position and still be able to read. No worry about pages flipping around, and I don’t have to hold a book open. A tap on the screen opens a menu where I can adjust the brightness and font. Turning the page is as simple as either a swipe or a tap on the screen.

5. There are some “Extras” installed on it… just for fun: Oh its got things like Pandora radio, a couple games, nothing fancy, just “Extras.”

6. You can still check-out from your library! I found that even my little tiny library offers e-books that I can check-out on my Nook. Books are downloaded onto my Nook and are automatically removed when the checkout period expires.

7. Using other devices: I can download the Nook reader software onto my laptop and other devices (iPads, iPhones, etc) and be able to access my Nook library on those as well. That way, my kids can read their books on their laptops, and I can have the Nook ALL TO MYSELF!

8. Headphone Jack: It plays audio and video, and I can plug my headphones in!

9. TWO MILLION: That’s how many books are available for you to download. MORE THAN TWO MILLION. Besides books, there’s newspapers and magazines, too. You can get a 14-day trial of any magazine or newspaper they have available, as well as free samples (usually about 10-15 pages) of any book you want.

10. BOOKMARK: I know, I can’t use my daughter’s handmade bookmark anymore. I need to find some other use for that. BUT, what’s neat about the Nook is it has a built in bookmark. If you shut the Nook off while you’re in the middle of reading, or even if it shuts off on its own, it automatically remembers what page you were on.

CONS:
1. LEND ME Feature: This is touted as a really cool feature of the Nook, but there is a caveat to this that you don’t find out until you actually try to use it. Not all books can be loaned out to people, and each book can only be loaned out ONCE. Not once to a certain person. ONCE EVER. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve had books that I’ve loved and have loaned out to several friends before. Apparently, the publishers want more people buying the books (hence, more MONEY). I GET THAT, truly I do… but can we at least put a limit of maybe 3 times per book? That seems more fair to me.

2. PRICE: OK, I paid $249 for the Nook Color, which is considerably more than what you would pay for a Kindle ($139/$189) or the original Nook ($149/$199). I think you have to know that you are really going to use it, and be a serious reader. If you are someone that just wants to use it to read books, you don’t need the color version of any device. If you want the ability to read magazines, newspapers, interact with other book lovers on sites like GoodReads, Facebook and Twitter, go ahead and get the NookColor.

3. Battery Life: If you are like me and can sit down to read for several hours at a time, you will find yourself charging your Nook quite often. Battery life claims to be “8 hours of reading time” but I question if that is accurate. (If you have a Kindle, you’re probably laughing at that right now.)

4. Screen smudges: The screen gets smudged up very easily, and needs to be cleaned often. My next purchase this weekend is a screen protector.

5. PRICE of Books: I hesitated including this, but I’m going to anyway. I’m a cheap person. When I go into Barnes & Noble to buy books, my first place I look (both online and in the store) is the Bargain Book section. So I like CHEAP BOOKS. We’re talking books in the $4-$5 range. Sometimes I splurge and buy some of my tried and true favorite authors’ books and spend $12-$15 for a paperback, but thats rare. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of my favorite authors of all-time, Jodi Picoult, had all of her books available available on the Nook, for an outrageous price of $12.99 each. $12.99 for an E-BOOK? A book that took virtually NOTHING to produce, I can’t loan out, I can’t re-sell it on Ebay, can’t put it in a garage sale, I can’t donate it to a charity, I can’t do anything with it but keep it for my very self. $12.99 seems outrageous to me for a COMPUTER FILE.

MOST of the NookBooks are similar in price to their paperback version, some cheaper and some more. I just think that when I am basically purchasing a computer file, they might want to consider lowering the price a bit more. For someone like me that could very easily read a book a week, this could turn into a very expensive hobby.

6. Security: Again, maybe this is not a big deal, but I figured I should mention it. The Nook is automatically linked to my Barnes & Noble account, hence automatically linked to my debit card. An advantage of “easy” one-touch ordering also means easy spending on my debit card. If my kids are scrolling through books in the Store, they have to be very careful not to “accidentally” buy a book, or things can get out of control every quickly.  (EDITED 2/9/11:  I discovered that under the “Settings” section on the Nook, there IS a way to default it to require your B&N password before making a purchase.  See? One more reason to go buy one today!)

BOTTOM LINE: So far, I’m in love with my Nook. I’ve read some amazing books so far, and it has made me fall in love with reading again. If you have a Nook or a Kindle, I’d love to hear your opinion, too!

DISCLOSURE: My husband and I purchased the NookColor, a 2-year service agreement, and a case with our own money. Opinions expressed here are mine.