Nook Color Hands-On
Saturday, October 30th, 2010
Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor, the first full color ebook reader, presents a series of dilemmas for interested buyers. B&N referred to it as a tablet, but NOOKcolor is really more like half a tablet. It literally is a read-only device. It displays text, PDF and Microsoft Office files, plays any MPEG-4 video (no Flash), plays MP3 and AAC music, plays animations. It surfs the Web using the Android browser (which means you can access and view your Netflix content), has an accelerometer so all content can be viewed in either orientation, has 8 GB of built-in memory, a microSD slot, and WiFi. But you can’t create anything in it such as creating email or word processing, except for book-related Facebook and Twitter posts.
It’s got an eight-hour battery life, compared to the battery life of monochrome ebook readers measured in weeks. An iPad, with its 9.7-inch screen, can play far more demanding video files for up to 10 hours. It’s priced at $250, a little less than half of an iPad, which obviously does nearly everything NOOKcolor does merely lifting its little finger (if an iPad had limbs), plus a lot more leisure and productivity activities.
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