No not a review by me, but by Engadget. So much like the first Kindle the Nook appears to be very 1.0. In other words it’s a valiant initial effort but needs improvement.
The main criticism made by Engadget deals with the software. Navigation on the Nook appears to be a slight mess with an amalgamation of submenus inside of other submenus which in turn are inside of main menus. Furthermore due to the slowness of the E Ink display’s refresh there are often periods where the LCD and E Ink are synced up leading to apparent frustrations. Overall the entire software stack is sluggish according to the review.
Engadget also mentioned the backlit LCD screen is quite unpleasant when it’s on full brightness and you’re reading the E Ink display. Apparently if you’re using the Nook to play music the LCD screen comes on every time the song changes, something that I would find annoying.
The buying experience on the device appears to be quite a bit better than that on the Kindle. Also if you’re using the Nook in a Barnes and Nobel store you can read through entire books while there. Well you can read entire books for up to an hour a day at least. This feature seems rather meaningless to me since if you’re in the store already you can go grab any book there and read through it for as long as you please while there. Still it’s an interesting feature to note.
Hearing all of this I can honestly say I’ll be staying with the Kindle (not that I was planning to change). But it’s good to see some major competition coming down the pipe from another company that knows books and book selling (as opposed to a company like Sony who traditionally isn’t in the book industry). Many I love the gadget industry, there is just so much competition.