Kindle vs. Nook

[RIP - VTEnviro]

We had been planning on getting one of the two as an Xmas gift for ourselves. My wife rides the train daily and travels for work occasionally, and I would use it too.

We had been set on a Kindle but that new color Nook looks spiffy. The pros and cons are fairly close. I'm still leaning Kindle but was hoping people might share their experiences with either model.

Thanks!

 

[wilheldp_PE]

A color screen is essentially useless for reading books, and I would imagine it would drain the battery substantially faster. The eInk on the Kindle makes the battery last a long damn time as long as you aren't on WiFi downloading stuff.

 

[FusionWhite]

I have a Kindle and LOVE it. Like wilhelp said the battery lasts forever (Im about to finish up my second novel since the last time I charged it). Its small, portable and pretty damn tough (I dropped mine from about four feet the other day with no signs of damage. The only time Ive used a Nook is at the demo stand in the B&N store but I am a big time supporter of Amazon and their amazing little e-reader.

We sat down and figured up the economics of our Kindle the other day. We have bought 62 books on it and have saved about twice what we paid for the Kindle in savings over hard copies of the books, plus the room we saved on our book shelf plus the gas of driving to the book store or shipping costs.

+1 Kindle.

 

[roadwreck]

I don't have either, I can only pass along the info I have heard from others. The battery life on the Kindle is supposed to be astounding. The color screen on the Nook makes it more desirable if you are going to use it to read magazines or newspapers since you can still get the photography in color (the Kindle is only black and white), for books that's typically not an issue. The Nook apparently allows you to share books with other Nook's too, which I think is a neat feature.

 

[CbusPaul]

I have the kindle and absolutely love it. I have had mine for some time, it is a first generation. I can't imagine the Nook beating it. The eInk is very easy on the eyes and the battery lasts a very long time. If I go on a week vacation, I can read several books and not need to recharge.

 

[udpolo15]

Have you considered an ipad? My wife just got me one it it is pretty cool. For 2x the price, you probably getting 10x the functionality. I use it to read the paper on the train, use it to read/note take pdfs at work and surf the web/email when sitting on the couch.

I haven't done much with music/videos, but the functionality is there. Battery life is more than enough.

 

[FusionWhite]

Have you considered an ipad? My wife just got me one it it is pretty cool. For 2x the price, you probably getting 10x the functionality. I use it to read the paper on the train, use it to read/note take pdfs at work and surf the web/email when sitting on the couch.
I haven't done much with music/videos, but the functionality is there. Battery life is more than enough.

I have an ipad too and as a book reader its far inferior to a Kindle. The ipad is great for a lot of things, but reading books is not one of them. If you want the experience of reading a book on your ipad put your nose about 12" from the monitor your reading this post on and stare for about 30 minutes. Be sure to have some Advil handy because your gonna have a hangover quality headache. Otherwise the ipad is awesome.

The battery life on the ipad (while very impressive) is not nearly long enough to rip through multiple books like I can do on my Kindle. If Im travelling for anything less then 2 weeks I dont even bother to bring my Kindle charger with me.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

I realistically don't have the need for the added bells and whistles CBus to go for the extra expense of the iPad.

The battery life on the Kindle sounds like a great perk.

 

[Master slacker]

Reading is for suckas!

 

[Dexman PE]

My wife has a nook (the older black &white version) and she loves it. The only reason she got that instead of the kindle is that nook has more flexibility with where/who you could buy and download from (at least at the time she bought it).

I think it just boils down to personal preference with the device itself and the features each offers.

 

[snickerd3]

as appealing as they sound, i still prefer the paper books. I do most of my heavy reading during vacations so I don't want to have to worry about get sand/sunblock/water/bird droppings (True story) at the beach or pool. Or leaving it at the chair when I go into the water.

Bird dropping story...we were in mexico at the beach and we were in the ocean swimming. The people sitting under the cabana/umbrella thing next to us had ordered food. The birds flocked from all over and used our area as the launch area. When we got back to our chairs the birds had left a nice little gift right in the book I was reading.

 

[roadwreck]

as appealing as they sound, i still prefer the paper books. I do most of my heavy reading during vacations so I don't want to have to worry about get sand/sunblock/water/bird droppings (True story) at the beach or pool. Or leaving it at the chair when I go into the water.

This is one of the reasons I have not bought a nook or kindle. The other is that we get most of our books from the library. We have a pretty awesome library system where you can reserve the books you want online then the library emails you when they are ready to be picked up. We can swing by on our way home from work without going out of our way. You can walk right up to the library front desk and the books are there waiting for you. So we pretty much get all the reading material we want for free. If I bought books I think a kindle or nook would be great, but I don't, so I haven't bought one.

 

[Supe]

I'd imagine getting sand in ones nook would be a fairly unpleasant situation.

 

[CbusPaul]

I can imagine it would be irritating.

 

[RIP - VTEnviro]

My wife has a nook (the older black &white version) and she loves it.

I'm pretty sure I'd love your wife's nook as well.

 

[maryannette]

My MIL really thought she wanted a kindle. I told her that we should go to Best Buy and let her try one out to see if she really liked it. She put it off and let it go for awhile. Then a friend got one and she tried it and liked it and wanted one. Then she found out that you have to buy book downloads, so she decided that she would keep using her library card.

 

[Dexman PE]

My wife has a nook (the older black &white version) and she loves it.

I'm pretty sure I'd love your wife's nook as well.

As nice as that nook is, it was really expensive and doesn't really promote reading. It does have a nice touch screen though...

 

[Slugger926]

I also like using the text to speech option on many books while at work. That is how I covered the Legal Environment of Business, and could never read such a dry book.

 

[TouchDown]

I got my wife a pandigital ereader from Best Buy. It is less format driven and flexible in displaying different types of books, though it's setup to work mainly through B&N.

One thing besides battery (which this unit will absolutely SUCK at), is the lighting difference between backlit and non backlit units.

The reason the batterlife is so great on Kindle is due to the screen technology, that will update (reason for black and white only) - but it's not backlit, so it takes very little energy to update, and uses no battery in between updates. That is great for reading under lamps and outside (where you can do it with paper books).

My wife prefers a backlit screen, and I thank her for it. She mainly reads at bedtime, and is OK looking at a lit screen, and it allows for the light to be turned off and I get to actually go to sleep without having to wake up at 3AM to turn off that God foresaken light because she's just sleeping away.

Screw battery life, I like sleeping in a mostly dark room. And the Pandigital unit is around $150, and figured it could be the stepping stone to a nicer unit down the road if she really liked it.

 

[FusionWhite]

I dont know if this will effect your decision but there are rumors going around that Borders is considering buying B&N. A major Borders shareholder is looking to finance the deal. I read and article the other day which said that unless it makes a major move Borders would be bankrupt within a few years and B&N probably wouldnt be far behind. Both companies are saddles with high levels of debt.

Anyway, I still vote Kindle.