Barnes & Noble’s new NOOK tries to please everybody (however it might probably’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 key bookseller is launching its new 8.7-inch NOOK Studying Pill on March 17, full with Android 15, 64GB of storage, a shade show, and a set of built-in studying modes. It feels like the subsequent refreshing e-reader second — that’s, till you understand that the show is an IPS LCD panel.

It is not precisely the system 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 would’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 truly do is isolate a necessary 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. Will probably be accessible in two colours at launch: Seafoam Inexperienced and Luna Gray.

With a multitouch IPS LCD display, 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 actual property. It runs Android 15 with the NOOK Pill expertise and gives as much as 16.5 hours of battery life — a consequence of its LCD display. E Ink gadgets, then again, do not eat almost as a lot energy.

Although the display is not E Ink, the NOOK Studying Pill 8.7 boasts built-in Studying Modes — Grayscale, Chromatic, and Immersive — to convey the show as shut as attainable to it. So, if you happen to aren’t studying one thing colourful (say, a graphic novel), you may dial again the colours to one thing a bit calmer. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless a LCD display, 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 limit readers to simply 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 at least one lane

Barnes & Noble is making an attempt to push this system onto readers’ desks, but it surely’s a pill sporting an e-reader’s clothes. The basic enchantment of e-readers is their distraction-free nature, which avoids any likelihood of steering you away from the ebook in your palms. 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 recognized 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 improbable 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. Finished 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 the whole lot for value. However “jack of all trades, grasp of none” is what’s going to maintain Barnes & Noble from gaining any actual floor within the e-reader area.