Barnes & Noble Nook Color user reviews

Pros When it works, it works

Cons The device jumps pages. You try to turn one page, and it auto turns serveral pages. Call Customer Service and they will ask you to reset and deregister the nook. It doesnt work. So, they will send you a replacement. The replacement is a pre-owned (reads t

Summary The device jumps pages. You try to turn one page, and it auto turns serveral pages. Call Customer Service and they will ask you to reset and deregister the nook. It doesnt work. So, they will send you a replacement. The replacement is a pre-owned (reads the box). Hold the replacement in hand and it will weigh heavier than the original (as heavy as an ipad). Call customer service, and they will keep repeating that they send nook color only, but for some reason it is heavy. The customer service agrees, the pre-owned nooks goes through some processing AND THE REPLACEMENT IS HEAVY.

Pros Backlit screen, and it's a good size for reading at 7 inches, bigger than the typical eink screen. Web browsing. Page turning is immediate.

Cons Heavier than you'd think. Cannot be operated with one hand for very long. Touch screen doesn't always take your touch. Battery life less than other eink readers. Do not expect this to sync to your iPhone or other device like the eink readers will

Summary I purchased this instead of the eink version because of the way it turned pages. It happens in the blink of an eye. The eink screen, when turning, goes all fuzzy and then resolves into the text. That happens quickly, but it was still off-putting. Also, I wrongly assumed that the Nook Color would sync to my last read place on my iphone. It does not have this functionality. You have to read the functions on the web site carefully to see that it's not the same as the eink version. What I really don't like about this device is that it's heavy. Your not going to hold it upright for the same time that you would hold a paperback. Also, I kind of expected I would be able to operate this with one hand. I know that I can't do that with a paperback, but this is modern tech, right? Well, to be honest, you can turn the page forward with one hand if you hold it where you can wrap your index or middle finger around to the screen, but this is really awkward and you won't do this for very long. Video is a plus and a minus. It's great that it's there, but there's no flash support and it doesn't support mpg and avi formats and that's what most of my stuff is.

That being said, it's still a very nifty gadget. the web browsing is cool. The screen is plenty clear and bright; I don't think "eye strain" is going to be a factor unless you're just prone to it (read "half-blind" ;).

Truthfully, it's great. It's just not a one handed device that you can read novels for days. If that's what you want, this isn't it.

Pros Perfect size for a ebook and magazine reader
Attractive design and reasonable price!
Great color screen

Cons it could use longer run time
Also I am a Asian, B/N would should improve their font support just as Kindle did(the font is build in(I could read asian web page,they just need to add a few line of code in their os-ebook reader sw I would think)

Summary I had a iPad before, as a ebook reader, it beat the iPad due to weight and form factor, this device should also take a lot of sell away from both iPad and Kindle this christmas season!
Amazon, watch out

Pros Attractive design; web browser works well; can "borrow" e-books from my local library

Cons Heavy; short battery life; dictionary does not work for non-Nook books

Summary Of the major e-readers, only the Nook and the Sony reader allows one to borrow e-books from libraries. I chose Nook over Kindle specifically because I wanted to read borrowed e-books from my local library (because, not all books are worth buying). Instead of capitalizing on this feature to sell more Nooks (and subsequently more books), BN makes it annoying and tiresome.

Buying books from the Nook store is easy and fast. There is, however, no elegant way to sideload books to your Nook. You can connect the Nook to the computer and transfer books as if it were an usb drive. The folder where you need to copy the book is several levels deep, however. So, to read access the book from Nook, you have to click through several layers of folders. Also, Nook only shows the file name instead of the book title. This is annoying because files from gutenberg.org aren't very descriptive. You can't rename the file through Nook.

If you use Adobe Digital Editions to copy the book, Nook will show the author and title of the book if you jump through some hoops. ADE, however, is buggy and requires you to manually drag files to the program, then to Nook. It's also giving me lots of error messages, but it could just be my computer.

By design, no sideloaded books show up on the home screen. Only books from BN show up on the home screen. The best you can do is create a "shelf" and manually put each sideloaded book onto that shelf, which is one level below the home screen.

Annoyinly, Nook's dictionary does not allow you to look up a word that is not on the page. Worse, Nook dictionary does not work for non-Nook books. A dictionary app would have been nice.

All in all, I wish the people at BN spent more time polishing up the interface. It seems shortsighted to make it so hard to read sideloaded content.