Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch

Amazon may have finally released an ebook reader with a touch screen, but Barnes & Noble is still one step ahead.?The new Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch ($99 direct), formerly called the Nook Touch, is now $40 less expensive, and also features improved software with faster page refreshes. As a result, it retains its Editors' Choice award as the best low-cost ebook reader you can buy. The best part: if you already have a Nook Touch, you can upgrade its operating system for free.

Design and Screen
The Nook is significantly smaller than its predecessor, thanks to the removal of everything but the screen and the bezel. It weighs 7.5 ounces, and measures 6.5 by 5.0 by 0.5 inches (HWD); it remains easy to slip into a bag or jacket pocket. The matte black back is sculpted, with a taper designed specifically for being held in one hand. There's a small "n" button below the screen, plus buttons on either side for flipping pages.?The power button is at the top of the back, and the USB port is on the bottom for charging the Nook or loading outside content. On the right side, there's a micro-SD slot for adding up to 32GB more storage to the 2GB that's built in, which is enough for 1,000 books.

The Nook's 6-inch E Ink Pearl display's resolution is 800 by 600, and text and images alike look crisp and clear. Everything is still in shades of gray (16 of them, to be exact), so this isn't much of a photo viewer, but the screen is plenty crisp. In return for the grayscale, you get a screen that isn't prone to fingerprints (my Nook hardly showed a smudge after an hour of use), can be read in direct sunlight, and won't hurt your eyes. Touch interaction was reliable and responsive, though the responsiveness is limited slightly by E Ink's refresh rate, so there was always a beat between pressing a button and the screen changing. I got used to the lag quickly, but make sure you wait about a half-second before mashing a button again, thinking it didn't work.

User Interface and Connectivity
The new Nook technically runs Android 2.1, but that doesn't mean much?everything you see is all Barnes & Noble, and feels nothing like Android as we know it on cell phones and tablets. This reader is all about reading, so there's no browser, games, or apps to be found.?When the Nook is off, it shows a rotation of pictures of authors and other literary things, much like the Kindle does. One small but nice addition is the ability to add your own photo as a screensaver, which both personalizes your device and makes it immediately recognizable as yours. Turning it back on and unlocking it, oddly, was the most annoying part of using the Nook; it frequently took me a few tries to drag the necessary line for the device to unlock.

There's no 3G modem built into the Nook anymore, just Wi-Fi. If you're out and about and need a new book, though, Barnes & Noble's partnership with AT&T means that you can step into a Starbucks or many other stores (like, of course, the 700 B&N stores) and download a book. When you're in a Barnes & Noble store, you can read entire books for free, and anywhere else there's Wi-Fi you'll only need to duck in for a minute: I downloaded the 731-page "These Guys Have all the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN," and from home screen to purchase to reading took about 30 seconds. Though there's no Web browser on the Nook, if it's necessary to connect to a Wi-Fi network a browser page will pop up, so you can accept terms of service or log in.

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