The Barnes & Nobel Nook Color is out. Here’s a review from the Pursuitist staff.
The 7″ Nook Color is very nice piece of hardware. Barnes & Noble had fallen behind in the eReader wars, but has come back nicely with this device. Amazon has shunned going head to head with the iPad, instead slashing the price on the Kindle and promoting it primarily as an eReader.
B&N have elected to make the Nook Color more of a multimedia device – making it compete directly with the iPad and other new tablets.
The Nook Color has an excellent 7″ color touchscreen. Performance is first rate. The screen is sharp and clear. There is Wi-Fi and PDF support, a web browser, and – of course – eBooks. The Nook Color is also making push into digital periodical content. It has also added Social Networking support (Twitter, Facebook). The device is small, but not light – almost a pound. It feels substantial in your hands.
The Nook Color isn’t without criticisms. There’s no 3G. And despite running on Google’s Android system, there are very few apps available. The device is a natural for them, and B&N says this is an area of growth for the Nook Color. The new color touchscreen also takes away one advantage of the Nook – battery life – which falls to a mere 8 hours.