The new $249 NOOKcolor has fast become the bestselling product at Barnes & Noble even as it begins shipping today, a few days before originally announced.
Pre-order sales of the 7-inch tablet are “significantly beyond that of the company’s aggressive expectations for the breakthrough new device,” said the bookseller. Pre-order sales began October 26.
The NOOKcolor will arrive at Best Buy, Walmart, B&N and Books-A-Million stores starting this week in very limited quantities.
The first color tablet/eReader from the big 3 eReader triumvirate (Amazon, Sony, B&N), the NOOKcolor won praise by CNET and Engadget reviewers for its beautiful (though not dazzling) screen, its great display of magazines and okay display of newspapers.
Both blogs liked the design of the unit, but CNET noted the NOOKcolor is bit too heavy to hold for long periods of reading (as is the even heavier iPad).
The key drawback of the device is that it doesn’t support Android Marketplace apps so B&N is creating its own apps market to launch early next year. The NOOKcolor also fails to support some audio and video formats.
CNET concludes, “At the end the day, despite the limited number of apps available at launch, the Nook Color is a much more polished e-reader than the original Nook was when it launched…its reading experience certainly rivals that of the iPad–just on a smaller, more portable scale.”
Engadget was particularly impressed with the Android device’s presentation of magazines. It called the NOOKcolor “the first viable option” for an avid reader of magazines and newspapers as well as books. “…the idea of having your favorite glossy delivered direct to a device like this every month (in a truly readable format) is a major innovation.” Engadget also says B&N plans to deliver its own app store in Q1 which will help improve upon the NOOKcolor’s utility as a full -fledged tablet (though it lacks 3G, Flash and the ability to play some movie formats). But it concludes, “For the price, you’re getting a lot of product here…”
Gizmodo offers a short video on the device.
