Barnes & Noble intros Nook Color: the worst of all worlds
Barnes & Noble introduced a new color version of its Nook eBook reader on Tuesday and as expected, it features a color touch screen. Unfortunately for B&N, this new device is unlikely to pose a significant challenge to either Apple's iPad or Amazon's Kindle.
The big advantage that both the Kindle and the original Nook had was a monochrome e-ink display which uses very little energy and generally provides excellent readability. The iPad on the other hand needs to be charged daily but its color LCD provides plenty of capability for displaying photos and video that are utterly beyond what a slow moving e-ink screen can do. This allows iPad users to utilize any of hundreds of thousands of apps for all sorts of tasks.
The Nook Color has a color LCD with a touch screen and runs on Android. But unlike forthcoming Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, this device is going to be locked down and will only be able to run a limited number of B&N-approved apps such as Pandora and Lonely Planet. Even with WiFi-only, the Nook Color only runs for eight hours, at least two hours less than an iPad. With limited capability, poor battery life and a higher price than the Kindle, the Nook Color doesn't really seem like it would be very appealing to anyone. At $249 it seems like either a full featured iPad or Galaxy tab would be a much better choice even at a higher price.
[Via: Crunchgear]
