Having launched in November of 2009, the Nook eReaders from Barnes and Noble have quickly become some of the most popular ebook readers on the market, standing up against giants like the Amazon Kindle without flinching.
Barnes and Noble has done a lot over the past two years to embrace the evolution of digital books by creating several new ereading apps for various platforms and by continuing to evolve the Nook and expanding their digital library internationally.
The Nook HD and Nook HD+ are the latest tablets from Barnes and Noble. Both offer the same set of features but with different designs. The Nook HD has a 7" screen and the Nook HD+ has a 9" screen, with the former supporting 720p and the latter supporting 1080p.
Both sport top-end high resolution screens, dual core processors, 10 hours of battery life, microSD card slots, and dual stereo speakers. And both rely on B&N's ecosystem for content.
Barnes and Noble released a new Nook Touch in April 2012 that has a reading light built into the screen. It is called the Nook Touch with GlowLight, and it is the first ebook reader to offer this type of front-lighting since the Sony PRS-700.
Other than the GlowLight, the new Nook Touch is exactly the same as the original; both have the same features and run the same software. The new Nook is a little lighter, however, and it has a grey border around the outside edge instead of black.
Nook Touch with GlowLight Review »
The Nook Tablet is the latest color ereader/tablet from Barnes and Noble. It looks just like the Nook Color but comes with some major upgrades in hardware.
The most prominent change is the addition of a dual core 1GHz processor with 1GB of RAM, making the Nook Tablet fast enough for things like 3D games and 1080p video.
In addition to B&N's selection of ebooks, periodicals, interactive magazines, children's books, and comic books, the Nook Tablet comes with several media apps pre-installed, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Pandora.
Barnes and Noble's Nook Touch ebook reader is being marketed as "The Simple Touch Reader". Using infrared technology for the touchscreen, the Nook Touch features a 6-inch paper-like, non-backlit E Ink display with 80% less flash when refreshing pages than other ereaders.
The Nook claims the longest battery life of any ereader, up to 2 full months with WiFi off and up to 3 weeks with WiFi turned on.
The Nook Color was Barnes and Noble's first tablet and was one of the leading devices to bridge the gap between ereaders with LCD screens and ones with E Ink..
With its 7-inch color touchscreen, the Nook Color is designed for reading newspapers, magazines, children's books and other color content in addition to ebooks.
The device also doubles as a portable multimedia device, capable of browsing the web and playing video and music thanks to the Android OS, of which can be hacked to run a number of 3rd-party Android apps.
Once the Nook Color and Nook Touch were released, Barnes and Noble kept selling the original Nook 3G and Nook WiFi E-Ink ebook readers until supplies ran out. Now they are hard to find.
The original Nook was one of two ebook readers to ever have a small LCD screen below an E Ink screen.
The Nook 3G and Nook WiFi both share all the same exact features with the exception of the free 3G wireless.
By supporting Adobe EPUB and PDF format, B&N's ereaders can read encrypted ebooks from a number of online ebook retailers as well as free library ebooks. There are also several sites around the web that have free ebooks in compatible formats.
Enter your email address to receive updates:
