The Boston Herald reviews the new Nook Color, not passing up the opportunity to make a pun with the headline saying that the device’s “intentions are hard to read”. As might be expected, the reviewer finds that loading the device with books is easy, but:
The actual reading on the other hand, started off well, but the experience deteriorated over time along with my eyes. The Nook has a 7-inch, back-lit LCD rather than an easier-on-the-eyes e-ink screen. The screen is coated to reduce glare, and it displays sharp-looking text. But at the end of the day, it’s still a computer monitor. About a half-hour was enough for me.
He calls the quality of digital newspapers on the device “awful”, saying that given the poor formatting and the cost he would rather have a PDF version of a printed paper. Magazines looked better, however, and Internet browsing worked great, albeit with some intrusive “quirks”.
In the end, he found that $250 price was a bit steep for a device that wasn’t sure if it was a tablet or an e-reader (or could perhaps be better at both).
I dim the display way down to about 3 to 5% and can read on it now quite a bit longer than the Boston Herald reviewer was able to. And I find it quite pleasant. Very solid low light with dimness at near (but not) 0 and many have reported using it that way.
My setting is not unlike the ‘ivory’ theme setting and I’ve seen people writing that they switch it to a ‘gray’ background that is easy on the eyes, which is ironic considering the complaints about the Kindle’s gray background.
Magazines are SUPERB on it, if one knows that one can double-tap to get readable size for a good area of the page (and ‘article mode’ is very well implemented) and of course you can pinch/zoom.
Gorgeous resoluton and color on them.
I want my newspapers in searchable text and not images though so have not tried them. Those I get on my Kindle instead.
My biggest problem is keyboard input due to the extreme oversensitivity of the keypad – I practiced (and felt as if i were working with explosives) by sending two posts to the Barnes and Noble board to let them know connectivity for me was better than for some others but that it was disturbed when I used the Nook cover with the heavy clamp that puts a lot of pressure on the left bezel. Cover off – no disconnections at all.
There are other input problems such as loss of cursor, which is very irritating when trying to type a forum note. But the web experience for just-reading is REALLY good.
I just wish input wasn’t so arduous.