With the portable e-reader and tablet market fairly exploding, and with the holiday season about to begin, Barnes & Noble has begun shipping the brand-new NOOKcolor Reader's Tablet, and we had the chance to see one in action last week in New York City. The device is incredibly thin and lightweight, and the seven-inch (measured diagonally) "VividView" LCD touchscreen (manufactured for Barnes & Noble by LG) is capable of displaying more than 16 million colors.
The Wi-Fi-enabled, web-browsing NOOKcolor runs the Android 2.1 operating system specifically, and while it does not offer the Android Marketplace, it will run Android apps including a variety of games. For those who want a break from reading, the NOOKcolor can stream music via the free Pandora service, as well as play MP3 and AAC music from local memory. The device arrives with eight gigabytes embedded, with a microSD card slot easily accessible around back. It also supports all MP4 digital video formats from day one, ready to make the most of the wide seven-inch LCD.
The user interface is, after a brief learning curve, highly intuitive, with nimble page turns, etc. and easy-to-adjust-on-the-fly settings. We can embrace social networking in a variety of ways, not only sharing content but by doing the unexpected such as grabbing a quote from a current selection and then sending it to Twitter/Facebook friends.
A growing list of magazines is now available on the Nook, some of which demand high-quality color in order to be properly appreciated. Consider the legendary photography of National Geographic for example, with terrific thumbnail access along the bottom to individual pages along the bottom of the screen, and the ability to enlarge images. Barnes & Noble has assured us that these are not merely legal/copyright arrangements, rather the periodicals need to be optimized for the device.
The preordered NOOKcolor units are shipping now, with new orders being fulfilled this week. The manufacturer's suggested retail price is a quite reasonable $249.
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