Barnes & Noble Nook Color Review (Updated) no comments
Note: I’ve updated my original review to reflect the version 1.2 firmware update from Barnes & Noble that upgraded the Nook Color ereader to Froyo and made it even more tablet-like. Most of the problems that I noted in my original review seem to have been fixed or at least improved. 
This update has really upgraded the Nook Color from being a good ereader to a great one.
* * *
One of the first things to do upon unpacking my new Nook Color is to connect to Barnes & Noble. I had to try several times to successfully connect to my Wi-Fi network, but once connected initially it has seemed to stay faithfully connected with only one exception. On that occasion I just had to tap a button to reconnect after waking the ereader.
To wake the Nook Color you need to drag the screen lock across the bottom of the screen. The home screen has three panels where you can arrange books, periodicals and documents as you like. You can even stack multiple books and periodicals on top of one another (kind of like my office). If it gets too messy, the Nook Color can also clean up and neatly arrange the items on the home screen after a double tap on the screen.
There is a side-scrolling strip across the bottom of the home screen called the Daily Shelf that holds recently added or read books and periodicals as well as recently used and added apps. You can arrange your titles as you like on the Daily Shelf and move them back and forth to the panels above. There is a Keep Reading button at the top of the home screen that will return you to your most recent read. There is also a More button, a tap upon which results in a drop-down list of several titles you have recently been reading.
The library of the Nook Color arranges your titles on 
bookshelves. You can sort by type of material — books, magazines or newspapers. You can create new shelves to sort your ebooks onto. This effectively works like categories or folders. If you prefer you can ditch the shelves and view your library as a list. You can sort your titles by Author, Title or Most Recent. To save space on the ereader books can be archived (removed from the device but stored in the cloud) and this is also where you will find a handy file explorer tool.
Nook Books will sync across different Nook devices and apps. Besides the Nook Color I have the Nook Touch ereader and apps on my iPad, Android phone and tablet. They all sync to my last read page as long as the Wi-Fi or 3G is connected.
One thing that is not so nice is that ebooks that were not purchased from B&N don’t seem to show the cover art while resting on the shelves of the library — just a generic gray cover with the title, at least in the case of the titles I have on my ereader.
The only hard navigational control on the Nook Color is the Nook symbol just below the screen. This is used to wake up the Nook Color when it is sleeping or, if the ereader is already awake, this button takes you to the home screen.
As long as the Nook Color is not sleeping there is a virtual button at the bottom of the screen that brings up the Quick Nav Bar. This contains icons for Library, Shop, Search, Apps, Web and Settings.
The App button takes you to a page where you can access the built-in apps of the Nook Color. These include Chess, Contacts, Crossword, Email, Gallery, Music, Nook Friends (B&N’s social ereading platform), Pandora and Sudoku. You can also go to the B&N store from here to buy more apps. Currently there are several hundred apps available (both paid and free) of all different types.
Using the Email app you can quickly and easily set up the Nook Color to send and receive your email over the Wi-Fi connection. I have email accounts with Yahoo, MSN and Gmail — the Nook Color was able to readily connect with all. You can view individual mailboxes or view messages from all accounts in a unified inbox.
The Settings button lets you access the device settings from anywhere, regardless of what you are doing on the ereader at the moment. This is as it should be — you should not have to close your book and go back to the home screen in order to change some setting or other. Overall I think B&N has done an excellent job on the navigation and the integration of the touchscreen on the Nook Color.
If, in your reading, you tap on a link to a web page in the text the browser will open and take you to the appropriate site. When you are finished you can tap on a small open book icon on the status bar to get back to your reading. This open book icon is usually present when you are doing something other than reading and is a quick way to go back to your last read.
That is not the only way to go back. Swiping to the left on the status bar serves as a back button and will take you back to whatever you were last doing. This function has a long memory — multiple swipes will take you back multiple steps.
Tap the center of the screen while reading and you get a reading tool bar with buttons for Content (lists TOC and your notes, highlights and bookmarks), Search, Share (Facebook, Twitter, via email to Gmail contacts), Text (font style and size — six choices for each; background/font color; line spacing and margin options) and a Brightness control. Basically, all of the controls you might need to access while reading are accessible without leaving the page you are reading.
Study tools are good. Simple tap in the upper right corner to add or remove a bookmark. To add a highlight and/or a note just tap a word and hold. This gives you a tool bar for these functions as well as the option to look up a word in the dictionary or online. Again, B&N has really done an excellent job of showing how to implement a touchscreen on an ereader.
The color LCD screen of the Nook Color is gorgeous. 
The VividView screen with ISP from LG Display is capable of displaying over 16 million colors and has a resolution of 1024 x 600. It is sharp and has a very wide field of view. Although the display of the Nook Color does seem a tad better than the iPad when outdoors, this is still not a good choice for reading at the beach. It is possible to see enough to read when outdoors, but the experience will not be pleasant.
I do prefer reading ebooks on e-ink rather than on backlit LCD displays (see LCD vs e-Ink). I suffer eyestrain if I read for a long time on a portable backlit screen. But the Nook Color has many choices for changing the background and text colors. I find that if I turn the brightness down and use the grey or black background setting I can read on it for quite a while with no ill effect. If you read for really long periods or if you plan to read a lot while out of doors, e-ink might be a better choice.
When I first received my Nook Color ereader, I noticed that in certain applications — most notably the Crossword app — the touchscreen was not responsive at the edges of the screen. This was very frustrating at times. This problem became less severe after an earlier software update, and I am happy to report that it is no longer an issue after the Froyo update. I now have no complaints with the touchscreen of the Nook Color — it is very fast and responsive.
When reading PDF files you can use pinch to zoom and pan around the page. Enlarging the page does not loose graphics in the files that I tried. The Nook Color handles zooming in and out and panning around PDF documents pretty quickly.
I did find a few problems related to handling PDF files, however. Firstly, page turning does not work the same with PDF files as it does with Nook Books. You have to swipe vertically to flip pages rather than horizontally as with a regular ebook. While this is not really a problem, it is confusing.
More troubling is that, at least with the PDF files I tried, you cannot manually add a bookmark and this ereader does not seem to be able to remember your last-read page in PDF documents. This means each time you open a PDF file you start at the cover. Most annoying if a lot of your reading is done on PDFs. The little open book icon also does not seem to work to take you back to a PDF document. Nor can you make annotations in PDFs.
In my initial impressions of the Nook Color post I said that the speaker was not very loud. I think this was in large part due to the poor volume of the web-based video I was watching. In fact, the speaker system is not as loud as the iPad’s, but should suffice in areas with little or no ambient noise. Unlike the iPad, which has a rounded back, the back panel of the Nook Color is flat. This means that if you have it sitting on a table or something the speaker is somewhat muffled.
I fired up the Pandora app (very nice!) and plugged in a set of Shure E500 earbuds and the sound volume and quality was quite good. The Pandora app and the music player will play in the background while you are reading.
The web browser on the Nook Color has been much improved since the ereader was first released. Pinch to zoom is now enabled. You can open additional windows and you can set the browser to be recognized as a mobile device or open webpages in desktop mode.
YouTube videos are also now much better on the Nook Color after the updates. They are now much sharper and rotate quickly between landscape and portrait views.
The Nook Color has an accelerometer, so it is capable of changing screen orientation automatically. When reading NookBooks, however, you can only read in portrait mode. One problem with this is that if there is a chart or some sort of graphic that is too small to see properly you cannot switch to landscape mode to achieve some enlargement. I wish B&N would unlock the orientation in the NookBook reader. You can read PDF files in landscape mode.
Magazines work quite nicely on the Nook Color. There is a page mode, in which pinch to zoom works, as well as an article mode, which is better for reading longish articles sans most of the graphics. Tapping on the center of the screen brings up a slider of page thumbnails at the bottom of the display that is handy for quickly navigating through a magazine. The Barnes & Noble Nook Newsstand has more digital magazines than most other ebookstores and magazines are identical to the paper versions.
I think that the Nook Color will make a good, 
albeit expensive, children’s ebook reader when combined with Nook Kids — B&N’s NookBook store for children. B&N is constantly growing this section of the store and children’s Nook Books work quite well on the Nook Color.
One advantage over the few dedicated children’s ereaders out there is that young readers won’t outgrow this one as their reading advances out of the picture book stage.
The Nook Color – Should You Buy One? – My Take
The firmware updates that B&N has supplied have rendered most of my previous complaints about the Nook Color ereader moot.
The Nook Color is something more than an ereader and something less than a tablet. The recent update to Froyo has made it more tablet-like. The Nook Color has already been rooted, so you could have a $250 Android tablet if you choose to go this route. Rooted Nook Color ereaders can get Kindle and other ereading apps. You can find out more about rooting the Nook Color at the XDA forums and NookDevs.
But even without rooting, the Nook Color seems much more functional to me than many of the cheaper Android tablets. There is no access to the Android Market, but B&N’s app store is growing. If one of the main purposes you plan on using a tablet for is ereading, then the Nook Color is an excellent choice.
The Nook Color is currently priced at $249 at Barnes & Noble.
Nook Color covers, cases and skins
B&N
has its own selection of covers and there is also a growing selection of third party Nook Color covers
For protection against splashes TrendyDigital has its waterproof covers available in a size for the Nook Color.
For shock protection Otterbox makes its Commuter Case in a size to fit the Nook Color.
DecalGirlhas a selection of skins to fit the Nook Color that include a downloadable matching wallpaper. I recommend the matte finish — it not only looks better but feels better. Decal10 is a discount coupon code that will give a 10 percent discount at DecalGirl.
SkinItalso has a number of skins for the Nook Color ereader. Coupon code skinitsaver15 will give you a 15 percent discount on any Skinit device skin throughout 2011.
