Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch eBook Reader (Wi-Fi Only)

I purchased this device new through Amazon Marketplace from JJ's RealBuy. It's perfect. Exactly what I wanted, an e-reader only, simple to use, sharp paper style screen, reasonably priced and with an expandable memory. If this is what you're looking for as well, go for it. You can manage the Nook using the free library management program Calibre, adding and deleting books from the Nook without having to log on to Barnes & Noble with the device. You can also get a ton of legally free books from Project Gutenberg, organize them in Calibre, and transfer them over to your Nook. The built in memory space on the Nook is only 250 MB for books not purchased through Barnes & Noble. The rest of the built in memory is reserved for the OS and your B&N purchases. But who cares, since this Nook has a Micro SD card slot for up to 32 GB of additional space! I just went ahead and bought a 32 GB card at the same time I ordered the Nook. I now have space for thousands of books! This does not have the built in reading light, but I didn't need that, and the newer Glo Light models don't have the expandable memory. I've also read that the battery drains faster on the Glo Light. If you like to listen to audible books, you can't do that on this Nook. Personally, I don't listen to audible books, so it's not a drawback for me. But if at some point in the future I did want to do that, I would just use my phone.

I found tablets and phones lack the battery life and quiet simplicity of this type of specialised product. Forget checking email, listening to audio or constant distractions. This ereader is purely a reading machine. The text is clearer than a laser printed page and the capacity of 32GB micro SD card means accessibility to 10,000's of books. As with my Samsung table I found PDF viewings unsatisfactory and even maps in epubs were a disappointment. Another issue is that, without a US credit card billing address, B&N will not let you use your account so I have had to store by own epubs in the machine and find them elsewhere. The unit is easy to operate and had a claimed battery life of up to two months. It is easily charged from a micro USB connection and files can easily be copied from a PC. The crystal clear text and easy touch or button navigation make reading a pleasure. There is only a minuscule delay when turning pages. All in all I am delighted by the unit which is good value for something that holds practically my entire library.

I'm the kind of guy that wants something to function well and that's it. This thing is brilliant at what it does: displays ebooks. No frills, no apps, no video, no nonsense. Because of this it makes it very easy to use. Download Calibre for free and this baby syncs right up with it. Battery lasts forever, and it has the same charger as most android smart phones, so In the mornings I take my smartphone off its charger and replace it with my little nook. I am in the military and as someone else said, this fits perfect in the side cargo pocket of my ABU's. I had the Kobo, which was a great reader, and my wife had the last nook which I didn't like because it was so damn heavy. I bought this for me so I could give my Kobo to my little girl. I was able to snag one used on here from a seller named NikonLover for $47! This thing is really great. The only complaint I can make is that the page buttons are a little too recessed, but this is not a huge issue as I turn the pages mostly via touchscreen anyways. Using this little beauty, and loading all of my own books, and PDF's that I have converted via Calibre, makes me beg the question: Why are people still buying Kindles? I guess that is the same dilemma I have with Iphones. Oh well, a fool and his money.... Buy this now! You will not regret it!

nook is a good ereader and sony is also a good ereader and i would recommend both to my friends, depending on their needs/wants. SIDELOAD= downloading a ebook from your computer hard drive to your ereader, weather sony or nook. this is done through the usb cable that plugs into the side of your ereader and also recharges the battery of your ereader, while you sideload or just for recharging. all ebooks should be backed up on computer hard drive first because there is no retrieving an ebook from a ereader . Dont move an ebook, instead copy the ebook on the ereader & retain the original download on computer hard drive because you might want to read it again in 10 years. MY NOOK i like MY nook because it is light wieght and the batteries last 1 month between recharges and it holds 500 books and has a slot to accept up to 32 gb flash drive memory, just in case i want my nook to hold 1000 books, and nook has a really bright white screen ,like expensive ink jet paper. If you leave wi fi "on",nook battery only last 2 weeks between recharge, with wi fi off ,battery last 4 weeks. My sony prs 300 ereader screen looks kinda grayish in compairson to nook, but only when they are side by side,my sony ereader screen looks just fine by itself . My sony ereader -prs 300- is less than 1/2 price of nook, but has no wi-fi & only holds 9 books but allows you to delete books one at a time or 4 at once, so you always can make room for 3 or 4 new books. sony's battery needs recharge thru usb cord every 2 weeks. but the sony can change from portriat to landscape orentation, so i can hold my sony ereader sideways, when i read in bed,on my back with the ereader held up over my head. My nook cant do this. sony prs300 works with .epub & .pdf & sony reader software that you download onto your computer. the email address for sony reader is inside sony ereader. sony reader for your computer is a epub & pdf reader 4 your computer that lets you download free internet books and copy them to the sony reader library ,where you can read the ebook on your computer and also sideload a copy of the ebook,through the ubs2 cable into your sony ereader - prs300 the sony reader reconizes the sony ereader-prs 300 and allows sideloads. nook wieghts 6 oz and sony wieghts 8 oz, so not much difference in wieght. And nook has wi - fi ,in-case i want to pay $12.00 for a book instead of downloading the book for free on to my computer. There might just be a situation where i cant get to my computer to get a free book and i was so bored that i was willing to pay for a wi-fi book, but i dont think so. the filthy rich would like the wi fi 12.99 book ,though. I thought that the nook touch screen would be cool , but it is kind of a pain the the butt because the nook changes pages when ever your finger gets even close to the screen, weather you want to change pages or not. ' So,you spend 30 % of you time ,just trying to find the page you were just on, 2 seconds ago. But,after a while,you get used to this and its not really an issue, even though it continues to occur. It's the price you pay for a touch screen. the nook works with .epub and .pfd books and adobe digital editions. You should download adobe digital editions from downloads/cnet.com for free onto your computer and then download free internet books into your computer file that the internet puts them in and copy the file into adobe digital editions library. adobe lets you look at/read-- the book on your computer and see if you want to sideload it into your nook. adobe digital editions will recon-nize your nook when you plug in the usb cord and has a drop down menu button that says copy ebook to nook. SIDELOAD means plug usb2 cable that comes with nook into computer and into nook. this cable recharges the nook battery and at the same time allows you to download .epub and .pdf ebooks & files into you nook. WHAT I REALLY HATE ABOUT THE NOOK is you cant delete just 1 book or just 20 books, you have no choice,you must delete all the books on the nook. Because of this,backup on to your computer any book you download into nook, as you cant retrieve anything from nook. You must delete every thing all at once and start from empty all over again. A very bad feature nook should change as soon as possible. The saving grace is the large 500 book capacity of the nook and the slot to install a 32 gb flash drive memory stick so that nook can hold 1000 books. You wont have to delete it all and start over for a long time . nook requires you go to barnes & noble to open an account & register the nook before nook will work. The B&N salespeople will do it 4 you, or you can do it yourself,if you like to read & follow instructions. When you delete nook , you have to reregister nook at barnes & noble all over again. most people will be out of range of B&N wi-fi ,so you wont be able to register nook without a trip to B&N to get in range of the wi fi.

At first I was torn between the Nook Simple Touch and the Kindle Paperwhite. I chose the Nook because of price and the absence of ads while reading a book. I had though that the Nook did not have a good dictionary function, but learned otherwise after it's purchase. All one needs to define a word from the dictionary is to place their finger on the word for two seconds and then chose the Look Up option on the bottom menu displayed on the left. Sharp resolution, useful utilities, convenient scrolling functions both off on the side of and on the screen. Lightweight, durable and well designed. Essay to download free books (I suggest Project Gutenberg). For downloading free books from on line sites or from the library, you will need to download Adobe Digital Edition 2 software which is free. I suggest that you purchase additional memory. Barnes and Noble only allocates 1/4 of a GIG out of 2GIG for your personal library from non Barnes and Noble books. One gig for software to run the Nook and 3/4 for books purchased from Barnes. The best buy for external memory is 8 GIG. I also suggest that your purchase one CaseCrown leather Regal flip case sold through Amazon; they are high quality for a reasonable price.

The unit that was sent to me does not power on. I searched on the Internet and a lot of other people have the same issue. It seems there is a problem with the batteries on these units.... They are supposed to last for a long time, but mine did not even power on once. It would be nice for the end user to be able to take the battery out and replace it; I am going to have to send mine back, even though I had to wait a while to get this one and was looking forward to use it, play with it, test it. Ok, so I sent this one back and got the money back, but not the cost to send it back to seller. I bought a second one from another seller. This one powered on, but had other serious issue with it. I tried to insert a micro SD card, but the casing for the card reader was misaligned and my card fell in the device itself. As this could have been labeled as my fault, that I did not pay enough attention to the casing, I did not try to send it back. Plus, I had to take my card out from inside the device somehow. I decided to open the device and forget about warranty to be able to get the card out. I tried to align the casing of the card reader, but instead I managed to break it entirely. The small metal plates broke in one spot and I decided to peel it off completely. I was able to finally put the cover back on the whole device, but without damaging some places of the plastic cover. I figured that 2GB of internal memory would be enough and I would be loading books on it through the USB connector, by connecting to a computer. But it turns out it does not have 2GB available internally to put books on. It only has 250 MB, like other reviewers have mentioned. I do not know if I can root the device without a card reader to put a card in. Have not tried to root it yet, but I read on the internet that it is possible. That would be the obvious solution to many of its software limitations. I went ahead and bought a third device because I really want a book reader with an E-Ink screen that has a card reader and that one seems fine, but I did not played with it much.

With two or three major reservations, I think that this is a superb little machine. I have just received it here in Canada, as a belated Christmas gift, and in terms of readability, all its features match the advertising. This Nook model is not available for sale outside the US, for good reason, though. The WiFi is locked into Barnes & Noble, only. There is no "period", or "dot", in the numerical keyboard, so it is not possible to enter another url, either to make a purchase from another bookseller, or, more importantly from my point of view, to log on to the local library (this would appear to apply to local US libraries as well; what a waste of WiFi!). You have to download everything onto your PC and transfer via the cable included. Also, you cannot make a purchase with B&N from outside the US, on this machine. I don't mind the latter, as I rarely purchase books, anway, but I am disappointed that all these details are not made more clear in the advertising. It took hours and hours for the battery to make its initial charge from my PC. You can see from the package that there was once a space in it for a wall outlet adapter (the holes for the prongs have been taped over). Making this a separate accessory is obviously a cost-savings measure for B&N, a poor comparison with other companies which automatically include an adapter with their e-readers. Finally, the support phone number provided for outside the US won't go through to a live body. Just as you reach that stage, the call is terminated with a statement that the transfer cannot be completed and you get the dialling tone. I hope people calling from within the US have better luck.

I think, the title sums up my opinion about this purchase good enough, but since I need to write 20+ words about it as well, here it goes. Putting some background, I don't have time nor money to purchase every book I want to read in paper, I find reading off the laptop screen impractical and uncomfortable because my laptop is too big to unsheathe it every time I want, while getting somewhere on a bus or a tram. And I'm not rich enough to buy myself an iPad :D So I was looking for a simple e-reader without bells & whistles, MP3, 3G, video playback capabilities and other stuff I won't use anyway, because I have an mp3 player for music, laptop for games, internet and movies, and I needed another piece of hardware to just read. Yeah, I'm all for "divide and conquer" and don't like combining everything in one :) Getting to the point - this device is just what I wanted. Text quality is great: "paper" is almost white, letters are black, just what I expected form the latest generation e-ink. The screen itslef barely blinks even without any kind of special protection (of course if you don't try to put it right under the lightbulb). Page-turning buttons could be a little easier to press (that's why I gave it 4 stars in "controls"), but who needs buttons, when you have a touchscreen anyway? What else? Well, controls are easy to learn, but in case you forget something, the user guide is already inside as your first available book. Easy to hold in hands, however I recommend you to buy a protective case for it to make your reading even easier and more comfortable. Requires wi-fi internet (b/g not n!) for activation when you turn it on for the first time. Wrapping it up - worth the money, does its job, good-looking. Buy it if you're in doubt =)