Barnes & Noble Release Colour E-Book Reader – But Can it Beat the Kindle?

Wednesday 27th October 2010 by Natalie in Android, eReaders.

On Tuesday, Barnes and Noble released their most impressive step into the e-book reader market yet, with the first colour reader available from a major brand. But is it good enough to compete with the Kindle? Many market analysts seem to think that could indeed be the case.

The Nook Color is about the same size as the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and boasts a 7 inch 1024×600 LCD touch-screen display with 16 million colours. It also comes with 8GB of storage space (that’s enough to hold over 6000 books, magazines and newspapers) and microSD capabilities if you need more, built-in speaker, headphone jack, built-in WiFi and social media integration, allowing you to update your Facebook and Twitter statuses with ease.

On the down-side, though, it doesn’t come with 3G, and whilst the Kindle can go weeks without needing to be charged up, the Nook Color can last only eight hours before petering out.

Still no word on when the Nook and the Nook Color will be available within the UK, and if you want to get your hands on it it looks like it’ll have to be an import job.

So unless the Nook gets a UK release date soon, the Kindle still looks like the best bet all round for UK e-book readers.

Do visit our sister site GearZap if you’re a keen Kindler and looking for any of these accessories and peripheries:

Kindle cover
Kindle case
Kindle light