Barnes & Noble Kills With Their eBook Reader: Nook

Barnes & Noble has come out of nowhere and taken the eBook Reader market and pulled an “Apple iPhone” on it. Sure there are plenty of great eBook readers on the market, with Amazon selling it’s Kindle and Kindle DX to great fame, Borders touting the Sony eReaders, and then iRex and Plastic Logic, who are sort of there. But with the “nook” Barnes and Noble has something really solid. As leaked earlier to Gizmodo, the reader is comprised of two screens, one eInk screen to read, and a smaller 3″ multitouch screen across the bottom for everything else. You can easily control your reader, type on the virtual keyboard, user a CoverFlow-esque book browser, and control your music through a great capacitive display. What’s more, all of this retails at a price point lower than Amazon at just $259. Gizmodo has got a great hands-on with the reader, while CrunchGear has a nice little comparison of the four major eBook Readers on the market. But what’s really interesting is how well thought out the nook really is. For example, you can lend books you own to friends and family for a 2 week period (just like real books!). Not only that, but they (and you) can read those books wherever you want: the nook, iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, Blackberry, and (soon) Windows Mobile! The nook even remembers your place, notes, and highlights across all the different environments. The next “reading” feature is that you get to read one book free on the device each time you go to a Barnes & Noble store. You can even sample books on the reader to see if you like them before buying the whole book. Finally, it’s still got a great battery life at 10 days, 3G and WiFi, and the bottom screen runs Android so there are plans for apps to be developed for it in the future, possibly better utilizing the built-in 2GB memory and SD card reader? Videos anyone? Overall, this looks great, solves a lot of issues people had with browsing the Kindle store through a eInk display, and I plain love it.