There’s a really good deal on a 7.8-inch ereader with a 300 ppi screen and page buttons at Amazon right now, but most people will probably lose interest as soon as they see the name of the device.
The Nook Glowlight 4 Plus is available for $144.99 (renewed) from a seller on Amazon that is known for selling refurbished Nooks. The Glowlight 4 Plus sells for $199 new so it’s a $55 discount, but you can’t buy it new at the moment (more on that in a minute).
The thing is, I think a lot of people would jump at this deal if it was a Kindle or a Kobo with the exact same design at that price. But it probably won’t garner much interest simply because of the fact that it’s a Nook.
The Nook Glowlight 4 Plus started shipping at the end of August of 2023 so it’s still only a few months old. These “renewed” units are probably just customer returns that Barnes and Noble can’t sell as new, and their return period is only 14 days so they can’t be very “used” at all—it’s not like buying a 5-year-old refurbished Kindle from Woot.
The Glowlight 4 Plus has a nice feature-set for the price. They don’t state it anywhere, but I’m pretty sure it has a Carta 1200 screen with improved contrast, and it has 300 ppi and a frontlight with adjustable color temperature.
The device is also waterproof (it’s IPx7 rated) and it has a USB-C port, WiFi, Bluetooth for audiobooks, and it has 32GB of storage space. It’s only one a few devices to have a 7.8-inch E Ink screen with page buttons on both sides, and there’s a sensor button below the screen as well.
The weird thing about this is I noticed that Barnes and Noble is currently not selling the Nook Glowlight 4 Plus from their website, and it appears to be unavailable from most of their stores as well, even though it was just released a few months ago.
On the B&N website it says that it’s temporarily out of stock, and they don’t expect to have more until May 31st, 2024. How can it be out of stock for the next 4+ months when it was just released 4.5 months ago? That seems weird. It’s not like Nooks are in high demand.
Nonetheless, $145 is a really good price for any modern 7.8-inch ereader. Nooks don’t have the greatest software, but they support EPUBs and PDFs, and their hardware is actually pretty nice, especially if you like having page buttons. If Amazon released a new Kindle exactly like this people would love it, and Amazon would sell it for a lot more than the Nook.
Glad Santa got me one of these for Christmas!
Now that it’s been used for a bit, how do you like the device?
I really like how this reminds me of my venerable Kindle Keyboard. If I were in the hunt for another e reader this would be a great steal as it’s everything I need big storage and buttons on either side of screen. I like to think that the Glowlight was so popular upon release that it exceeded the amount produced in the first batch or two. It’s nice to see a new Nook out in the world.
After three generations of trying Nooks to see if they were good yet, I had to finally give up. This space now includes Kobo, Boox, and Pocketbook. All make better 7.8″ readers with wider support and features I use/need that are missing from the Nook. A simple one is not scrambling my shelves whenever I sideload content.
What makes this sized Nook a problem? Didn’t the very first 7.8 Nook disappear quickly after being released? Didn’t BN learn from that experience? I have lost all confidence in this company. I do truly like their device design. Ebookwise and Nook were the start of my love for ereaders. But how they have handled their software and way of doing things and being so slow and dragging behind Kobo and Kindle – I just can’t trust in giving them my money for a reader or ebook anymore. I transitioned to Kobo and I am so glad Idid.
The absolutely one thing keeping me from leaving Amazon entirely for ebooks is that Amazon is the only provider that has ebook/audiobook sync. If Kobo or Barnes and Noble ever provided that I could switch completely.
Perhaps I am being harsh, but why would anyone consider this Nook when there are two vastly better devices with mostly the same features and at roughly the same price (Kobo Libra 2 and Pocketbook Verse Pro)?
Well, for one, the PocketBook has a 6″ screen so that’s a big difference. PocketBook’s comparable 7.8″ model costs $269 so it’s way more expensive than this. The Libra is closer with a 7″ screen, but it costs $190 and there’s still a pretty big difference with a 7.8″ screen, and some people don’t like asymmetrical designs. I wish Kobo would bring back a 7.8″ ereader with a symmetrical design like the Kobo Aura One, but with page buttons.
I’ve tried to embrace Nook devices over several generations, but every software update trashed all my markups (highlighting, notes, etc.) for sideloaded content. And they wouldn’t disclose the local database structure that the markup was stored in, so I literally had to reverse engineer that in order to retrieve it. Also, the last time I tried, markups for sideloaded content wasn’t shared between devices sharing an account. Hence my somewhat reluctant, but not regrettable, transition to Kindle.
This is a great size and love the page turn buttons! I might pick this one up.
Nook GL 4 Plus – saw one at BN today. Looks nice but I do not care for the flush screen.
I see no reason to upgrade from my GL 3 Plus which I like very much. My one wish is for a better NOOK internal dictionary the current one is very limited for the reading I do.