Nook Simple Glow Light – UnBoxing

In my previous post I mentioned my Nook Simple Touch. A short time after I bought this Banes and Ernst dropped the price of the Nook Simple Glow Light to £49.

I had mentioned in the above post that one of the only faults with the Nook Simple Touch was the fact that without a source of light you couldn’t read from it. The Nook Simple Glow Light solves this problem.

The Glow Light is a back lit e-Reader and makes reading your Nook anywhere a complete possibility. It has been mentioned across the web that the back light isn’t great, however I think that it is important to point out that there is nothing else at this price point offering such a complete e-Reader experience. The light isn’t as uniform as that of the likes of a Kindle. However it is perfectly usable making reading in the dark a doddle!

My advice however is, if you are going for a Nook, go for the Glow Light, I didn’t think having a back light would have made much of a difference, however it only took me a matter of hours before I realised how handy it would actually be. The most obvious on is in bed. No back light means a bed side light at the minimum needs to be on. The just by lying on your back you arm is likely to cast a shadow on the screen blocking off part of that ‘page.’ The back light removes any such problems and at such an affordable price point you should definitely considering making the extra investment in the Nook Simple Glow Light.

Finally one other difference between the two is that the Nook Simple Glow Light comes supplied with a waller charger (plug & lead – the lead doubles up for data transfer purposes also). The Nook Simple Touch comes only with a charging and data transfer lead, if you don’t already have a compatible wall charger you will need to buy one or rely on charging through a USB port on your computer.

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Nook Simple Touch UnBoxing

I already had a few options for readings whilst on the go, the first being books and magazines, but c’mon it is 2013 and actual books are heavy and awkward. I know to some people I have just committed a crime against humanity by stating that actual books are in some way less than the perfect item to place your eyes upon, but for me they are ideal. I had my iPad, iPhone, and more importantly with the mobile internet do we actually need to read one specific thing when there are millions of articles and pages to read online?

That opens up thousands more questions but I think it is safe to say that at some point most people will come across a title that they want to read, something that they have a genuine interest in and the internet just won’t cut it.

It is this point for me that an e-reader has a role. I am not a ‘big’ reader, I have probably read about 10 books in the last as many years however there are a few books that have appeared in the recent past that have made me look at a techy way of reading them.

So the iPad and iPhone are options, iBooks seems like a good solution too, and with Apple’s OSX Mavericks coming very soon with iBooks built in Apple seems to have a great solution. One main problem is the screen, the screen that is so perfect for so many things just doesn’t suit reading, then you have battery issues, an iPad lasts hours, an e-reader can last months.

Then along came the biggie, the price reduction in the Banes and Ernst Nook Simple Touch e-Reader. Coming in at £29 it made e-Readers very affordable. So I bought one, and they are great. With a program called Calibre you can convert many different eBook formats to be compatible with the Nook, it evens handles pdf files reasonably well (a little laggy, but completely functional). The biggest benefit in these e-Readers is the e-Ink, and the paper type display, it greatly reduces any eyestrain and makes reading from the tablet much easier on the eye. It is actually like reading from paper.

Books can be downloaded from the built in book store (accessed via wifi), or for some other source and transferred to the Nook, remembering Calibre you have a huge library of both free and paid books available.

The next big advantage is the battery life, one charge can last up to three months, say no more!

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