Nook Exclusive Review

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After a week of using Nook, Gadget Pilipinas’ US-based correspondent, Jaro Baja, shares her impressions on Barnes and Noble’s e-book reader.
Click Continue Reading for the complete review.
My first impression: it was heavy, well at least for me. Maybe I was expecting it to be as light as kindle (tho I’ve never owned one). But it’s not that bad. I’m getting used to it.
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Overall, it’d say it’s a great product. Books, or should I say ebooks are so accessible that I might just ran out of money buying tons of ebooks. I love the idea that you can buy/start reading a book in just a few seconds. You don’t have to go to the bookstore to check/buy a book anymore. You can just download a sample of the book for free so you can get a feel of the story. They’d give you like the first 2 chapters of the book to read through. You could even read customer and editorial reviews. And you won’t have problems with the font size of the texts. You can choose from 5 different views: extra small, small, medium, large or extra large. At the same time you can change font styles. But this one I haven’t tried yet. I’m not sure how to do it. There is an option to change it but it seems to be on default since I don’t think there are other font styles installed on my nook and I still have no idea how to do so. There also no issues when you suddenly need to stop reading and do something else and forget to check/bookmark the page no. On the menu you can choose “reading now” and you’ll see the last page of the book you’re reading. If you reading multiple books, there’s an option where you choose the “go to” option to “furthest read point” for that book, and it will bring you to the last page you’ve read, or just bookmark it straight from the menu.
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The e-ink technology is just amazing that you wouldn’t strain your eyes like for example if you read using an ipad/ipod touch (since there’s an ereader app for barnes and noble or kindle for iphone). But just like a book, if you plan on reading at night, you’d be needing a source of light.
Battery life is not bad either. It lasted about a week on stand-by mode with occasional use. But when I tried to finish a book in a day (maybe that was 7-10 hrs straight) my battery was at 27%. And I was surprised how fast the battery almost drained. But I’m sure if I didn’t read 7 hrs straight, the battery won’t be that bad. It charges about 3 hours.
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Hmm, what else. Oh, the built in dictionary was a little disappointing. Other than the fact that they need to update their lists (a major upgrade really), it was a little hard to navigate. Let’s just say it takes time to look up a word. To be honest, I prefer kindles (from the reviews I’ve read and watched). You can navigate easily on kindle and the when you look up a word, just place the cursor on the word and the definition appears like a foornote, not leaving the main page. On nook, it directs you to another page for the definition. I know it’s not a big issue but I personally like it all there on one page. I surely hope that this changes on the next firmware upgrade.
To tell you the truth, I would have bought the kindle instead. But the geeky side of me, tells me that the nook has more potential. It’s running on android and I’m sure it will only take time before third party apps start popping out. I’ve already read a few blogs about rooting (hacking) nook. They teach you how you can browse the net, check fb and twitter as well, add apps to be precise. Plus the nook has an sd slot and a removable battery which is + for me.
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Aside from that I think nook is starting a trend. Known designers are starting to make a line just for nook, with their covers. Some covers would even cost like $85. Crazy.
But I have to tell you, at the moment, Nook is only available in the US, since it’s running on a company based here. And I’m not sure they have any plans on going international anytime soon. You can bring it with you and read when you travel outside US but you won’t be able to buy ebooks since it will be able to detect your IP address.
So there, I’m sure I’ve missed other stuff but if you have other questions, just ask :) tc!
[Rating:3.5/5]

Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.

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