Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight review

US book giant Barnes & Noble is bringing its entire range of ebook readers to the UK this year, and it looks a formidable line-up. The first product of this new wave is the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, which aims to take on Amazon at its own game.

You might think it was onto a bit of a loser here – after all, the Kindle range is now synonymous with whole concept of ebook readers. However, it does have a weapon in its armoury the Kindle can’t yet call on (at least until Amazon brings its Kindle Paperwhite to the UK): a built-in light for reading in the dark.

Hold down the small “n” button set into the device’s lower screen bezel, and after a couple of seconds the screen is bathed in soft, white light, courtesy of eight tiny LEDs built into the device’s top edge. The light can be adjusted in intensity, and according to Barnes & Noble doesn’t impact on battery unduly.

With the light switched on, it says battery life is reduced from two months to one month (at an average of 30 minutes reading per day), and so far we haven’t found any reason to take issue with that claim. After a full week of reading for around 1hr 30mins per day, with the light on for a fair proportion of that time, the battery hadn’t yet dipped below 50%.

It’s incredibly useful, not only for reading in bed, but also in other situations where the ambient light isn’t ideal, and we found it to be less tiring on the eyes than a backlit tablet screen. That isn’t the end of the Nook’s talents though. It’s also equipped with an infrared touchscreen, just like the Kindle Touch, and, in a bout of one-size-fits-all generosity, supplements this with a pair of physical buttons set into the bezel on each side of the screen.

Design, display quality and performance

Physically, the Nook is one of those devices that divides opinion. Some people will like its squat profile, rounded corners, and soft-plastic, scooped-out rear; others will point out, quite rightly, that it isn’t particularly slim at 11.4mm, and looks a little toy-like in comparison to the Kindles.

What cannot be disputed is that the specification is up to scratch. Inside, there’s 2GB of built-in storage, a microSD slot for expanding that should the need arise, and the screen itself is a 6in E Ink Pearl unit, with a resolution of 600 x 800.

First impressions are that there isn’t much between this and the Kindle Touch’s display, but closer investigation reveals a subtle difference. The Nook has an integrated, anti-glare screen coating, presumably so it catches the light evenly, and this softens the appearance of text compared with the Amazon Kindle Touch.

There’s also a difference in contrast, which is ever so slightly superior on the Kindle Touch. Performance is right up there, though, with page turns taking 0.7 seconds a pop, and the UI feeling generally responsive.

User interface and content

It’s worth sparing a word about that user interface, too, because it’s very nicely put together. The homescreen is split into three – displaying covers for what you’re reading now, what you’ve just bought, and suggestions for what to read next. The shop-front is more attractive than the Kindle’s, with a similar three-way split, showing “Browse and Lists” boxes at the top of the screen and titles “we think you’ll love” along the bottom.

The onscreen keyboard is perfectly usable. Its four rows of square keys are responsive enough to make carrying out keyword searches and making brief notes a relatively pleasant experience.

As for reading, you can choose from six fonts, each at seven sizes, three line spacing and three margin spacing settings. Words can be looked up in the onboard Merriam-Webster dictionary by holding and touching the “Look Up” option, and sections can be highlighted, annotated and shared by email, Facebook and Twitter.

The key to the success of any ebook reader, however, is content, and on this front Barnes & Noble looks to have it cracked. The first plank is the Barnes & Noble bookstore, which arrives in the UK at the same time as the first of the new ebook readers, and has 2.5 million titles to choose from.

We can’t pass judgement on how well UK-specific content is represented as the service wasn’t live at the time of writing. However, we can’t imagine you’ll be stuck for reading material, and even if the Barnes & Noble store doesn’t have what you’re looking for, there are alternatives. Unlike the Kindle, the Nook is compatible with Adobe’s ebook DRM system, and when we plugged it in via the micro-USB socket in its bottom edge, Adobe Digital Editions picked it up straight away, allowing us to transfer books bought in the WHSmith and Waterstones stores, as well as texts borrowed from our local library’s ebook loans website.

Other nice touches include the ability to require a password for purchases – a help for parents of curious children with mischievous tendencies – and the LendMe system, which allows you to loan designated titles to friends who also own Nooks. Don’t get too excited by the latter, though, as it’s severely limited: you can only lend a book once to one person, and then for only 14 days.

Verdict

The Nook does have a few weaknesses. There’s no audio support, which will be a turn-off for fans of audiobooks. The Nook has nothing to match Amazon’s X-Ray feature, and support for PDF reading is woeful. We loaded some manuals and magazine pages on the Simple Touch and found them unreadable, with no support for pinch-to-zoom, panning or option to reflow the text.

For the business of reading novels and non-fiction texts purchased in ebook format, however, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight poses a serious challenge to Amazon’s Kindles. Amazon in the UK offers nothing like it (the similar Paperwhite Kindle is only available to US customers), the price is good, matching the Kindle Touch at £109, and the support for Adobe Digital Editions gives it another critical advantage.

If you’re considering buying a Kindle Touch, we strongly suggest you give one of these a whirl first.

Screen
Screen size	6.0in
Resolution	600 x 800
Colour screen	no
Touchscreen	yes
eBook screen-refresh time	0.7 seconds
Battery
Integrated memory	2.0GB
Memory-card type	microSD
Dimensions
Dimensions	16.7 x 11.4 x 165mm (WDH)
Weight	197g
File format support
Plain text	no
HTML	no
RTF	no
PDF	yes
EPUB	yes
BBeB	no
AZW	no
Microsoft Word	no