Barnes & Noble Nook review (2011)

In many ways, the Nook is almost a post-digital device. When you open the box you just pull out the Nook and start dealing with content - no need to worry about the USB cord or charger just yet, tucked away in a second compartment. After the Nook is powered on the first time you might never need to power cycle it again. WiFi works automatically at any Starbucks or Barnes & Noble. There aren't any "web addresses" to type in or "apps" to install. I've never forced anything to quit, and I'm not sure how I would anyway.

Technically the new Nook is a touchscreen E Ink ebook reader. It communicates with the Barnes & Noble ecosystem, and also works as a simple mass storage device for sideloading ePub or Adobe Digital Edition titles you might have lying around. Even more technically, the device is running Google's Android operating system - though there isn't a single hint to that fact in the actual UI or operation of the reader, but more on that later.

The actual object is made out of a soft touch plastic, both front and back, with a large indentation in the rear to give you something to hold onto. At its thickest the Nook is certainly thicker than the Kindle 3 (0.47-inches vs 0.34-inches), but both devices are super light (the Nook wins at 7.5-ounces, the Kindle 3 is a hefty 8.5), and I actually greatly prefer holding the Nook. The thickness means less of a "pinch" is required to hold onto it, it just rests in the hand. You can turn pages by swiping anywhere on the screen, tapping on the edge of the screen, or pushing one of the four rubber ridges on the sides of the device - which can be customized to your preference. Between the shape and all this flexibility, arm and hand fatigue is basically a non-issue, which should be great news for anyone used to reading on something like the iPad or even the Nook Color.

What a difference a E Ink touchscreen makes. UI-wise there's almost no point in comparing the new Nook to the original, or even the Nook Color. After seeing how easy it should be to page through books, jump to pages, change my font size, jump into another book, and preview or purchase a new title, I'm almost embarrassed for Amazon. The Kindle 3′s abstraction of the UI onto hardware buttons and endless menus seems positively last century in comparison. Even typing on the Nook is faster and easier than it is on the Kindle's hardware keyboard.

I'll attempt to explain the touch UI further, but I'll probably just sound stupid. Basically, things are where you expect them to be, and they're really responsive when you tap them. There's only one main hardware button which brings up the "main menu" of home, library, shop, etc., and tapping on the screen while inside a book brings up commands relevant to book reading (go to page, change the text styling, share). That's about it. The fact that any of these things are hard to do on devices like the Kindle or Nook Color really evades me, but when it comes to pure "even a grandma could do it" simplicity, the new Nook is the hands down winner.

Of course, Barnes & Noble doesn’t just achieve ease of use through the touchscreen. The fact that the new Nook is really only trying to do one thing is a big benefit. I wish I had an email client and an RSS reader and a web browser here, (and I look forward to a hacked version of this device running something more like stock Android), but it’s hard to argue with the straightforward results of a device dedicated only to reading.

That’s not to say there aren’t shortcomings in the software. For starters, Barnes & Noble is trying to make reading "social." The functionality to share passages over Twitter or Facebook or email seems straightforward enough, though I had trouble importing my Google contacts, but I’m not buying into the Nook Friends "social network" at all. The bottom third of the home screen is dedicated to recommendations from your friend group, but the trouble is I don’t personally know a single person who uses a Nook product, so I don’t have anybody to hook up with. I can understand B&N’s enthusiasm, but their efforts would be better spent helping me figure out what my real friends are actually reading (through partnering with a service like Goodreads, who has an app for the Nook Color), instead of my theoretical friends who would all be B&N customers in some fantasy land.

My other big problem is with the way the Nook ecosystem handles sync. As small and portable as the Nook is, I won’t always have it with me, so it’s very important to sync well with a mobile app. This is something Amazon just destroys at, with everything always staying synced automagically, but B&N hasn’t quite figured it out. For Nook you have to manually push the sync button from inside the library. You normally don’t even need to go into the library, since your recent titles are all on the home screen, so really you’re going to the library for the express purpose of syncing. And if you forget to sync before you start reading a title, you’re totally out of luck — if you push sync, you’ll just upload your most recent activity in the book. Cue frustration.