Find eBook Readers Blog   Reading in the Digital Age

The official name of Barnes & Noble’s newest ereader offering is the All-New Nook, The Simple Reader.  For those of us who do not work in B&N’s marketing department this is rather a mouthful, so for brevity’s sake I’ll refer to the new ereader here as the Nook Touch. 

The Simple Touch Reader is, in fact, a very apt name.  The new Nook is very simple — elegantly so — and is focused squarely on reading Nook Books; a task at which it excels.  It also features a very nice IR-based touchscreen from Neonode that is quite responsive and optically clear, with no glare or other ill effects on the reading experience.

Everything about the Nook Touch, even the packaging, seems focused on making it functional and practical while also being simple and intuitive to use.  When I first opened the outer packaging I was rather surprised by the small size of the box the new ereader came in.  The box has two compartments.  The larger compartment, when the lid is lifted, reveals the Nook Touch nestled in its foam bed.  A smaller section at the foot of the box houses the AC adaptor and a USB cable.

My Nook arrived with an 85 percent charge in its battery.  I plugged it in to top the battery off while I read the quick start guide.  Next came connecting to my Wi-Fi network and then my account at B&N.  All of this went very smoothly.  If you don’t have an existing account at B&N you will need to establish one, which will require a credit card.

I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed when I first saw photos of B&N’s new ereader.  It appeared to be rather plain and uninspired.  This is an ereader that is hard to photograph in a way that does it justice.  So until you meet one in person you will just have to take my word for it that there is nothing plain about the Nook Touch.  It features an understated design that appears to be well constructed of quality materials, which give it a quite sophisticated and elegant look and feel when seen in the flesh.

The Nook Touch feels very comfortable in one’s hands.  The bezel and back are coated in a non-slip rubberized finish.  Rather than just being flat, the back of the ereader is indented in the center, which provides a comfortable grip for one’s fingers.  The Nook Touch looks and feels quite well made and appears durable to me.

The power button is on the back of the ereader. On the right edge there is a micro SD card slot and the USB port is on the bottom edge.  The familiar Nook button is found below the screen on the bezel.  To either side of the screen are two sets of page turning buttons.  These just look like lines in the photos, as they are just raised ridges a little over an inch tall and about a sixteenth of an inch wide. 

I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like the page-turning buttons.  I like the fact that B&N has included buttons on both sides of the bezel even though the touchscreen works well for turning pages.  This gives you more options and ways to hold the ereader.   But these buttons do take some getting used to because they are so unusual.  They also seem to require a quite firm press.  They are aesthetically pleasing and do fit in with the minimalist design of the Nook Touch, while also appearing to be quite durable.  In any case, I mostly use the touchscreen for flipping pages.  On the Nook Touch this is accomplished with either a swipe or a tap at the edge of the screen.

Pressing the Nook button on the front bezel wakes the Nook Touch and provides a slider at the bottom of the screen that you drag to unlock the ereader.  The ereader’s home screen displays the ebook you are currently reading along with the number of pages you have read in a box in the upper left corner.  To the right a few of the newest additions to your library are listed and along the bottom of the home screen is a strip of recommendations from B&N.

Pressing the Nook button once the Nook Touch is awake pulls up a Quick Nav Bar at the bottom of the screen.  From here you can quickly go to the device’s settings, search the device, shop the B&N store, reach the Home screen or your Library.  The search function on the Nook Touch will vary depending on where you are.  If you search while in the library the tool will first search the library and then the B&N store.

While reading a book you tap the center of the page to bring up the reading tools.  This is a toolbar that appears at the bottom of the page and provides the following functions:

• Content — Table of contents and your notes, highlights and bookmarks.
• Find — For searching within the book.
• Go To — Go to a particular page, also contains a page slider for quick navigation and a Go Back button.
• Font button to adjust page and font settings.
• More — Opens a page with more info on the book, including links to reviews and related titles.  Also provides a Share button to access some of the social reading features of the Nook Touch.  You can also archive a book from this page to save space on your ereader.

The Nook Touch gives you seven different font sizes and six font styles to choose from.  You can also adjust line spacing and the margin size.  The largest font on the Nook Touch is not as large as the Kindle 3’s largest font size, so it may not work as well for those with visual impairments.

Tapping the center of the screen also brings up a Status Bar at the top of the screen that displays small icons showing battery charge, Wi-Fi status and a clock.  If you are in your library or the home screen the status bar will show a small open book icon.  Tapping on this takes you back to what you were last reading.  A swipe to the left on the status bar acts like a back button.  This is a very useful feature, especially as it can be used multiple times to take you back multiple steps.

Adding bookmarks and annotations is made very quick and easy by a touchscreen.  To add or remove a bookmark just requires a tap in the upper right corner.  If you tap and hold a word you get a toolbar with options to look the word up in the built-in dictionary (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) or make a note or highlight.  You can also select a passage to share on Twitter, Facebook or with your email contacts.

All of the settings and controls for the ereader are easily and quickly available from just about anywhere.  The excellent touchscreen of the Nook Touch makes accessing and using these features simple and convenient.  Navigation around the ereader will be very easy to learn, even if you’ve never used an ereader before.

The library of the Nook Touch lets you display your ebooks as thumbnails or in a list with details.  You can sort ebooks by Most Recent, Author or Title.  You can also choose to view all items, books only, periodicals, LendMe Nook books that you have borrowed or loaned, your files or your shelves.  Shelves are like categories — you can create and name new shelves as you wish and organize your ebooks onto them.  Ebooks can be on more than one shelf at a time.

Adobe Digital Editions immediately recognized my Nook Touch and authorized it with no problems.  I was then able to use ADE to transfer ebooks purchased from Kobo or elsewhere onto the ereader and open them.  You should be able to sideload ePub books you purchase from ebookstores other than B&N quite easily, but you will need to use Adobe DE if they have DRM.

I’ve also tried a few PDF documents on the Nook Touch.  It is fine for reading non-scanned documents or books in PDF format.  Graphs, schematics and other graphics were lost in in the reflow when I changed the font size.  For reading PDFs with graphics you would be better served by an ereader that features a pan and zoom function, such as the Kindle 3 or one of the Sony ereaders.

The Nook Touch comes with two sets of screen savers: Dead author portraits and nature scenes.  The dead author portraits are somewhat more stylized than those of the Kindle, while the nature scenes are landscape photographs that seemed rather blah to me.  Photos tend to look rather boring to me on an e-ink screen.  Pen and ink drawings and illustrations are a different matter.  For the nature selection I think B&N would have done better using natural history type illustrations.  The Kindle 3 tosses in a few illustrations of dead birds and fish with the authors that are quite nice.  You can also load your own pictures onto the Nook Touch to use as screen savers.

I have not really noticed a significant difference between the Pearl e-ink displays of the Nook Touch and the Kindle 3 or the Sony Touch when viewing a static page of text.  There is a difference in the refresh of the e-ink screen that happens when you turn the pages on the Nook Touch however.

When turning pages the Nook Touch does not seem to refresh the e-ink display as completely as other ereaders with every page turn.  This results in less of the black flash that usually occurs when you flip pages on an e-ink based ereader.  Every sixth page the Nook Touch does a more thorough refresh, which then results in the familiar black flash.

This results in page turns that are cleaner and will probably be more attractive to new users of e-ink displays.  But there are a couple of negative consequences from the manner in which this ereader turns pages.  Firstly, most users quickly get used to the black flash and don’t notice it anymore.  This may be more difficult if the flash occurs intermittently, though it does not seem an issue to me.

More importantly, I have noticed some ghosting with my Nook Touch’s display.  It is not always present, and it is faint when it is — but it is sometimes there.  This is probably due to the way in which this ereader refreshes the screen.

On the whole I really like the Nook Touch and am quite impressed with Barnes & Noble’s latest ereader.  It is a pleasure to read on, simple to use, and the small size and light weight will make it very portable.  The Nook Touch and its feature set also somehow feel to me like the perfect counterpoint for its shelf mate and bigger sibling, the Nook Color.

However, there are a few things that this ereader cannot do or that might be annoying that you should know about before you buy one.  To me, none of these are serious enough to dissuade me from buying the Nook Touch (or keeping mine now that I’ve already bought it).  But  some users might feel differently. 

• The Nook Touch does not do landscape mode.  Period.  In most cases this will not bother me, but sometimes you can get a bit of enlargement for a graphic or page in a PDF document by displaying it in landscape mode.  UPDATE: There is the option to show web pages in landscape mode in the hidden browser (see below).
• The display sometimes suffers from faint ghosting — occasionally there are faint afterimages of lines of text or images from previous pages.  After a few page refreshes the artifacts disappear.  I noted above that  the Nook Touch sometimes shows less of the black flash that is typical when e-ink displays are refreshed.  Perhaps the occasional ghosting is the price paid.  In any case it is very faint, is not always present and goes away after several page turns.  I am very much able to live with this issue, but it might prove to be rather annoying to some users.
• No web browser.  This one irks me less than it would have a year or two ago.  Most of us have other mobile devices that are much more adroit at surfing the web and checking email than an e-ink based ereader.  Still, it is nice to have the ability should you need it, and being able to look up words or topics from your reading on Wikipedia or Google without pulling out a second device is a nice asset.  I imagine this is something B&N may well be adding in a firmware update.  Indeed, a inactivated web browser has been discovered lurking in the Nook Touch’s code.  Probably it was not ready for prime time yet when the Nook Touch was released.   UPDATE: I was incorrect in saying that the browser is inactivated.  It is undocumented, but as reader E points out, if you type a web address into the search field it will open.  The browser’s functionality does not seem to always be 100 percent — probably this is why B&N kept it hidden.

Again, for me these issues are more than outweighed by the qualities of the Nook Touch.  It is amazing how far B&N has come from the rushed and somewhat clumsy launch of the original Nook ereader.  Obviously the company is aggressively trying to improve the quality of both its service and its products.  If Borders had made half as much effort it would probably not be where it is now.

Nook Touch vs Kindle 3

I’ve always been a Kindle fan.  At the same time I don’t think it is good for us consumers when a single company dominates an entire market.  I doubt the Kindle 3 would be as good as it is without the competition from Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others.  For similar reasons I keep hoping for a viable iPad competitor.

The Kindle 3 does have some very serious competition in the Nook Touch.  The Kindle 3 is more versatile and has more capabilities, but I think that Barnes & Noble has managed to put most of the features that most users will want in a very attractive and easy-to-use package.  The Nook Touch is very focused on reading Nook Books — and it does this very well.  Which ereader will be best for you will depend on your needs. 

I also find that I like using a touchscreen on an ereader — I have and enjoy using the Sony Touch, which has an IR-based touchscreen from Neonode like the Nook Touch does.  A touchscreen, when well implemented, is faster and easier to use than the 5-way controller of the Kindle ereaders in my opinion.  I will be really surprised if the Kindle 4, whenever it arrives, does not eschew the chiclet keyboard in favor of a touchscreen and virtual keyboard.

Because of its intuitive ease of use I think the Nook Touch will be the ideal ereader for those who are not fascinated by new technology and don’t think that it is great fun to spend time with a new gadget learning how to set it up and use it properly.  The learning curve for this ereader is a very small one indeed.

Of course, one of the biggest features of the Kindle ereaders is the Kindle Store itself and this continues to be a big advantage for Amazon.  I purchase ebooks from Barnes & Noble, Kobo and even the Sony Reader Store;  but I purchase the majority of my ebooks from the Kindle Store.   Even though the Nook Book store has come a long way,  in my experience I am more likely to find the title I am looking for in a digital format at Amazon and personally I still like the shopping experience there best.

I am fortunate to have both the Kindle 3 and the Nook Touch.  If I could keep only one and were forced to make a choice between them I would choose to keep the Kindle 3 because of the access to the Kindle Store that it provides.  But it would not be a happy choice, and I would much regret the loss of my new Nook Touch.

Nice job Barnes & Noble!

The Nook Touch is available for $139 with free shipping from Barnes & Noble.

Nook Touch covers & cases

Barnes & Noble of course has a selection of covers for their new ereader, but there are a few aftermarket covers and cases starting to appear as well.

CaseCrown makes zippered sleevesfor the Nook Touch in several designs that are priced between just over $5 and just over $11.

TrendyDigital makes its WaterGuard Waterproof Case for the Nook Touch.  This costs $15.99 or $19.99 for the model with padding and heavier duty detachable straps.

Gizmo Dorksmakes several covers for the Nook Touch.  The Faux Leather Case features an integrated stand and also comes bundled with a wall and auto charger and some other accessories for $17.99.  This case is available in several bundles at different prices.  The company also makes a cork case and a neoprene zippered sleeve.

Mivizu  makes a leather case for the Nook Touch that features an integrated stand and a flip top.  Priced at $25.85.

DecalGirl has skins for the Nook Touch.  Currently there are around 100 different designs to choose from.  Each design also comes with a downloadable wallpaper that continues the design across the ereader’s screen.  DecalGirl charges $14.99 for skins to fit the Nook Touch,  and a matte finish (which I recommend) is another $3.  You can use coupon code Decal10 to get a 10 percent discount at DecalGirl.

SkinItalso now has a large selection of skins for the Nook Touch ereader.  Skinit device skins tend to be more expensive ($29.99 for Nook Touch skins), but the company does have a lot of unique designs.  These include everything from movie and music themed skins to sports and collegiate themes.

Skinit has a 15 percent off discount coupon code —  SKINITSAVER15 — that is good throughout 2011.

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• Barnes & Noble unveils its new Nook ereader