But here's what made the nook's second coming possible: the hardware was top notch, the problems (slow page turns, sideloaded books with garbled titles, crashes and UI missteps) were all in the software. So we didn't bother ordering one and writing a me-too review. It was slow, buggy and the touch screen UI was clumsy. Our verdict at the time? The same as nearly every review you've read: it stunk. But, perhaps like you, we did head to our local Barnes and Noble and spend lots of quality time with their demo nook.
We weren't among the small group selected to receive and review the nook in early December. Had Barnes & Noble waited until mid-February 2010 when the device was actually available in quantity and it had undergone two significant firmware updates that transformed the reader from trash to beloved trinket, life would have been much better. An experienced tech company would have paced the release differently.
B&N is first and foremost a bricks and mortar book seller and not a technology company, which might have been the problem. Were Barnes & Noble not one of America's largest booksellers with plenty of market clout and reputation to shore them up, they'd have packed up their bits and bytes and gone home. And it was hard to feel sorry for B&N, who got bad press for ditching the device's designer, Spring Design, while keeping the design Spring had developed for B&N (Spring Design will sell their version as the Alex eBook reader and they've reached an agreement in principle with B&N). We can only imagine the head honchos at Sony (makers of the competing Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Sony Reader Daily Edition) toasting each other with saki glasses held high while Amazon's Jeff Bezos cackled in his infamous way. It took until mid-February 2010 to get them to stores and have them in stock for shipping online. And they weren't ready to ship en masse just after the holidays either. It was supposed to ship by Christmas but a good number of pre-orders didn't, so Barnes & Noble sent would-be gift givers sad little cardboard nooks to put under the tree. Barnes & Noble sent out very few review units (perhaps that was foresight) and it was nearly universally panned. Let's face it, the nook launch in early December 2009 was a fiasco.
In Chief (updated Apfor the nook 1.3 update)
2010: Read our Nook Color review.Įditor's note, June 2010: Barnes & Noble dropped the price of the nook 3G to $199 and now also offers the nook Wi-Fi which is identical but has only Wi-Fi, no 3G for $149. What's not: Can't create collections or folders to organize books.Įditor's note, June 2011: Read our New Nook Simple Touch Reader review.Įditor's note, Nov. Home > eBook Reader Reviews > Barnes & Noble Nook
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