During this year’s Black Friday, I switched teams in the (not very large) e-reader wars. Ever since I was a sophomore in high school, I’ve used some sort of Nook from Barnes and Noble. Growing up, I always loved Barnes and Noble. Sure it’s a chain, but it’s still a bookstore and I enjoyed supporting it. This extended to the Nook. It always felt like they had better features for a slightly cheaper price than the Kindles that were available. They received backlights on the base model well before the Kindle did, and they still have physical buttons.
Despite all that, the Kindle has finally eclipsed the Nook in certain key features that are useful for me: water resistance, integration with libraries, file transfer, and services.
For reference, I specifically have the Kindle Paperwhite 2018, and previously had the Nook Glowlight 3.
The Good
It’s pretty straightforward. The Kindle is slimmer with smaller bezels, and seems to have overall better battery life. I have a tendency to use my e-readers in airplane mode all the time, unless I need to connect to download a book. I also have the backlight off in most situations. On the Nook I would get between 1 and 2 weeks of reading time, and the Kindle seems to be trending more in the range of 2 to 3 weeks. The Kindle also has better standby battery life; the Nook, if unused for a week or two, would be close to dead.
The Kindle also seems to have more responsive software. The Nook has a tendency to lag. What I particularly appreciate is that the Kindle has a sort of “fast startup” mode that’s turned off by default. While they do warn this will decrease battery life, the time I referenced above is on this mode. I definitely appreciate having this turned on, because clicking the power button and swiping up to get reading is now as fast as an early generation finger-print reader on smartphones. In other words, much faster than you would expect from an e-ink screen.
The services are also excellent. Being able to integrate through the Libby app with my local library is excellent, and the Kindle does not get all up in arms about wanting to add PDF’s. The Nook is very tough with Adobe DRM, and I could rarely get anything added successfully to it.
While Kindle Unlimited does not always have the books I want, it’s an excellent feature that I’ve subscribed to for now. My biggest annoyance with the Nook is that being a Barnes and Noble member netted me absolutely nothing. The Nook books were not substantially less expensive in any way, and there were almost never sales. Also, the quality of ebooks available could be spotty on the lower price-point.
Finally, the Paperwhite is water resistant. Why not?
The Bad
There are two really dumb things about the Kindle. First, there are no page-turn buttons, making one-handed operation very frustrating. I’ve gotten used to it more or less, but it’s an annoyance that could easily be fixed. Also, a touch-screen only device with a slow-response e-ink screen just feels like a problem waiting to happen. There’s something about having the physical buttons that makes me feel more sure that everything will work out.
Second, the one button they do have, the power button, is on the bottom. One of my frequent situations for reading is at a restaurant or a coffee shop. I do not want to be holding the device in my hand, nor do I want to crane my head as it lies flat on the table. So, I want to lean it up against something: a salt shaker, a flip-book of the monthly deals, or anything else I can find. This was an excellent experience with the Nook, with its top-placed power button. The first time I tried it on a Kindle the screen shut off.
Because the power button is on the bottom. The weight of the Kindle shuts the screen off. Ugh.
Beyond these hardware annoyances, there are a few software issues as well. First, it’s Amazon so they are tracking what I’m doing, and also servicing me ads on my lock screen and home screen. I know there are some ways to get around this, but that’s not the point. On the Nook, you can choose between nature scenes or famous author portraits as your lock screen. How nice!
While reading, the navigation and tools just don’t seem as refined and thought-out for the reader as the Nook does. Page numbers often don’t work, and navigating quickly to a specific page is basically not possible in an intuitive way. The Nook has a horizontal scroll bar you can quickly bring up. On the Kindle I have to tap on the very top center to do anything other than turn the page (I wish it was anywhere in the center, but no) and what pops up is not particularly useful right away.
Of course I have years of working with the Nook interface, so maybe I’ll come around to the Kindle. I wish I could suppress the ads very easily, even as a hidden option in the settings, rather than lying about being a child or something similar. But overall, it’s been a good experience. Luckily there are wonderful applications that might even help me avoid the sunk-cost of having many books in my Nook library that I don’t want to buy twice.