Barnes & Noble’s new NOOK tries to please everybody (however it may well’t pretend E Ink)

This St. Patrick’s Day, Barnes & Noble is making an attempt to toss a bit of luck into its tech line. The most important bookseller is launching its new 8.7-inch NOOK Studying Pill on March 17, full with Android 15, 64GB of storage, a colour show, and a set of built-in studying modes. It seems like the following refreshing e-reader second — that’s, till you notice that the show is an IPS LCD panel.

It isn’t precisely the gadget that e-reader fans have been asking for — particularly the devoted NOOK customers ready on an actual E Ink comeback. The GlowLight 4 Plus did arrive in 2023, but it surely wasn’t the generational gamechanger that might’ve pulled followers away from Kindle or Kobo.

With its new NOOK Studying Pill 8.7, Barnes & Noble is hedging to please everybody. What it could really do is isolate a vital group of individuals within the studying world: E Ink loyalists.

Model

Barnes & Noble

Storage

64GB

Working System

Android 15 with NOOK Pill expertise

Battery

16.5 hours

Barnes & Noble’s newest versatile pill has a studying focus however affords a flexible price range pill expertise with Android 15 and a vivid, colour show for varied codecs. 

What’s the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7?

Specs and hypothesis

You may preorder Barnes and Noble’s new NOOK for $150. Will probably be out there in two colours at launch: Seafoam Inexperienced and Luna Gray.

With a multitouch IPS LCD display screen, the brand new NOOK is a standard, backlit pill with as much as 400 nits of brightness (some experiences peg it larger) and eight.7 inches of display screen actual property. It runs Android 15 with the NOOK Pill expertise and affords as much as 16.5 hours of battery life — a consequence of its LCD display screen. E Ink units, alternatively, do not eat almost as a lot energy.

Although the display screen is not E Ink, the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7 boasts built-in Studying Modes — Grayscale, Chromatic, and Immersive — to deliver the show as shut as attainable to it. So, should you aren’t studying one thing colourful (say, a graphic novel), you’ll be able to dial again the colours to one thing a bit calmer. But it surely’s nonetheless a LCD display screen, and Barnes & Noble cannot deny that.

Clearly, the NOOK Studying Pill is not precisely your run-of-the-mill e-reader. It runs Android 15 (and the NOOK Pill expertise), so customers can entry the Google Play Retailer and obtain varied apps. The colour capabilities will not prohibit readers to only conventional e-books, inviting magazines, manga, and extra to the expertise. The pill additionally sports activities a back and front digital camera, which undoubtedly is not a function on Kindle or Kobo e-readers.

Barnes & Noble is making an attempt to please everybody

As an alternative of committing to 1 lane

Barnes & Noble is making an attempt to push this gadget onto readers’ desks, but it surely’s a pill carrying an e-reader’s clothes. The basic enchantment of e-readers is their distraction-free nature, which avoids any probability of steering you away from the e-book in your arms. If something, this NOOK feels extra like Amazon’s Kindle Hearth than a devoted studying software in any respect. When a “studying gadget” begins including bells and whistles that invite different actions into the equation, it renounces its devoted “studying” goal.

Moreover, it is essential to notice that Barnes & Noble sidestepped the E Ink show that competitors like Kindle and Kobo are recognized for, leaving readers itching for a paper-like show hanging but once more. E Ink is fashionable due to its seemingly eternal battery life, ease on the eyes, and improbable mimicry of actual paper — to not point out, slower refreshes that truly make you decelerate with out dropping any momentum in your studying session.

Barnes & Noble ought to’ve given the NOOK GlowLight E Ink line a well-deserved refresh as a substitute. Carried out proper, an improve might’ve made a dent within the grip Kindle and Kobo have on the e-reader market.

However for now, at $150, the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7 is a tool that does a bit of little bit of every part for an excellent worth. However “jack of all trades, grasp of none” is what is going to hold Barnes & Noble from gaining any actual floor within the e-reader house.