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

This St. Patrick’s Day, Barnes & Noble is attempting to toss just a little luck into its tech line. The key 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 subsequent refreshing e-reader second — that’s, till you notice that the show is an IPS LCD panel.

It isn’t precisely the system that e-reader fanatics have been asking for — particularly the devoted NOOK customers ready on an actual E Ink comeback. The GlowLight 4 Plus did arrive in 2023, nevertheless it 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 might truly do is isolate an important group of individuals within the studying world: E Ink loyalists.

What’s the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7?

Specs and hypothesis

You possibly can preorder Barnes and Noble’s new NOOK for $150. It is going to 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 reviews peg it larger) and eight.7 inches of display screen actual property. It runs Android 15 with the NOOK Pill expertise and presents as much as 16.5 hours of battery life — a consequence of its LCD display screen. E Ink units, alternatively, do not devour almost as a lot energy.

Regardless that the display screen is not E Ink, the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7 boasts built-in Studying Modes — Grayscale, Chromatic, and Immersive — to carry the show as shut as attainable to it. So, when you aren’t studying one thing colourful (say, a graphic novel), you possibly can 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 attempting to please everybody

As an alternative of committing to 1 lane

Barnes & Noble is attempting to push this system onto readers’ desks, nevertheless it’s a pill carrying an e-reader’s clothes. The elemental attraction of e-readers is their distraction-free nature, which avoids any likelihood 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 device in any respect. When a “studying system” begins including bells and whistles that invite different actions into the equation, it renounces its devoted “studying” objective.

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

Barnes & Noble ought to’ve given the NOOK GlowLight E Ink line a well-deserved refresh as an alternative. 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 just a little little bit of every thing for a great value. However “jack of all trades, grasp of none” is what is going to maintain Barnes & Noble from gaining any actual floor within the e-reader area.