Most people that use ereaders to read ebooks seem to think that Nooks aren’t very good and they would never consider buying one.
There was a time when Nooks were seen as a good alternative to Kindles, and there was a brief time when Nooks were actually kind of popular (back in the early days).
Now the general consensus is Nooks are trash and they aren’t worth buying. Only people who are big fans of Barnes and Noble seem to purchase them, and even ardent Nook supporters are disappointed with how B&N handles Nooks and how Nooks are treated as an afterthought in stores.
Look around online and you’ll see how unpopular Nooks are in 2025. The Nook subreddit only has 6k members. By comparison, the Kindle subreddit has 419k members, and the Kobo subreddit has 83k members.
It’s gotten to the point where I’m not even sure why Nooks are hated so much. They really aren’t that bad. The E Ink screen looks great. They’re one of the few options left with page buttons on both sides of the screen. And because of the wider bezels they’re comfortable to hold.
Are Nooks so disliked because of their software? It’s not as customizable as most, and B&N puts little effort into adding new features and improving it, but the software is still adequate and usable. Nooks only support two ebooks formats, EPUB and PDF, but that still covers a lot of ground.
Is it the fact that Nook books are locked to B&N and can’t be read on non-Nook devices and apps? Is it because the DRM can’t be removed from Nook books? That exact same scenario hasn’t stopped Apple from being able to build up a successful ebook business, and they don’t even sell dedicated ereaders like Nooks.
I think part of the problem is the fact that most of the people that work for Barnes and Noble don’t respect or like Nooks. They look down on them like they’re inferior to paper books, and that attitude has trickled down to customers and it has affected the overall development of Nooks.
Could B&N do something to make Nooks popular again? What if they put more effort into improving the software? Would that even matter at this point?
I like my Nooks but I asked around before I bought them and people said a few things. They brought up the software being limited (no further explanation). The lack of true boldness and recently the removal of line thickness choices and some font. The removal of hyphens (this is a main dislike of Nooks to some). The permanent (unless you go out of your way to fix) storage partition of sideloaded books on the Glow4. The soft touch plastic.
Oddly no one brought up the DRM issue until after I bought one. All you needed to do is find the old apk as its been removed from microsoft app store and install. It still works for now if you want to buy books from B&N. Once it no longer works I won’t shop B&N but I’ll continue to use my nooks.
The only issue that bothered me at all was the storage partition. If can pay for X amount of something do not tell me I cant have the full amount. But the fix was already out by the time I got mine and it’s not too complex. All the other things to me were unimportant to what I wanted the thing to do. And it does what I want it to do for me perfectly well.
Also when I first got an e-reader I only knew of Kindles and Nooks. For as much as Kobos get pushed to people (feels like a cult of kobo lovers and a cult of nook haters at times) I’d never heard of them at all until I began my search. The people around me only used those two brands themselves so that’s all I knew existed. Now I know of the offshore brands too.
5-8 years ago is when I last visited a B&N and it had the Nook display front and center as you walk in. That store had been there for many years at that point and the Nook location was still the same as when it opened. The store remains open today but given how often people mention B&N not caring about the Nook brand I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved the displays to where they have movies or records so they can put more tables of some best seller or local(ish) author.
I actually like the Nooks. We currently have one in the family. The only thing I don’t like about them– and that’s why I use a Kindle– is the lack of true bold options.
Nook ereaders had / have pretty good hardware compared to the competition, and they were quite popular in my country. Then GDPR came which means they can’t legally steal Europeans’ data anymore, so they pulled out of the whole continent. I honestly can’t believe it was worth leaving an entire market of hundreds of millions of people over that.
Since then they’ve just kept shooting themselves in the foot and they still make very weird decisions so I say let them just die out and disappear, we already have a lot of evil companies to deal with.
Nooks have always been my favorite ereaders. Kobo is second. Kindles last. But I haven’t bought a Nookbook in years.
For me, it’s the lack of syncing content and reading position between Nook and my phone. I don’t always have a device with me, so at those times I like to read on my phone. Nook is the only one that doesn’t sync my content.
I use a NOOK ereader. I own all brands and keep coming back to it (GlowLight 4 Plus).
The actual reading experience is great. The screen size is wonderful. I use rewards points for discounted ebooks.
I am one of those people that use them but just do not understand why they do what they do.
I wish they could:
– Improve software by adding more reading options (give us back Georgia and holding options!)
– Dark mode
– Covers on sleep (it’s silly but everyone else has it)
At the end of the day, I prefer buttons on my ereader. I like ereaders that aren’t like a Kobo Libra where one side is thicker on a side.
Also yeah. Get B&N employees actually knowledge about it. Get some good deals in place. My idea? Deeply discount for the holidays just to get hardware in the hands of loyal users and then add in some incentives for membership.
My first e reader and tablet was the Nook 7″ Color. My next move was to what I will always think was the pinnacle of actual, not “farmed-out”, Nook hardware which was the Nook HD+ and its remarkable 8.9 inch screen. It really came into its own when about a year after purchase I was able to convert it to full Android. It still works, and I can still sideload books into it but its now ponderous weight prohibits further use. I did try the Nook(Lenovo) M10 which never had a single software/firmware update (use it now only for graphic and illustrated tomes). Finally moved onto the M9 which was close to the HD+ screen size but chose the Lenovo version over the Nook as I did not need B&N access and it was less expensive. When their hardware was being done internally, it was well worth the cost but since that was closed out, not so much!
My first ereader was a Nook, ordered in 2010. Then, it was difficult to order one from the Netherlands. For me, the reader was a revelation.
But nowadays, I have several ereaders in different sizes and none of them is a Nook.
The Glowlight 3 has a very readable screen– better than I Kindle, I’d say. More clarity, better contrast, etc.
Like many other commenters, I do not like the lack of bold options on fonts. The Nook Simple Touch, which I purchased 13 years ago, had bolder fonts. (The option of bolder fonts is why I much prefer e-books to print copies. )The Nook Simple Touch had the option of changing the font size on PDFs. That option hasn’t been available for any subsequent Nooks I have perused. Software is supposed to get better, not get worse. But that is not the case for B&N Nooks.
The Glowlight 3 had a more visible screen–better clarity and contrast– compared to the Glowlight 4e.
I would add that I don’t like the smaller size of the Glowlight 4e. It would have been better for B&N to have a 7″screen. The 7″ Paperwhite I have is about the same size as the 6″ Glowlight3, which leads me to assume that a 7″ Glowlight “4e’ would have been about the same size as the 6” Glowlight 3.
Of course, there is also the poor treatment that B&N gives to sideloaded books. This is probably done to “encourage” purchasing e-books from B&N. Unfortunately, the lack of bold options ensures that I will not purchase any e-books from B&N.
I keep a limited number of sideloaded books on my Nooks. Of about 60 sideloaded books, 6—the same ones every time–do not appear in Collections/Shelves when I turn on my Nooks. That is at least better than having all of them disappear from Collections/Shelves, I guess.
My first e-reader was a Nook, but current trends suggest I’m unlikely to ever buy one again. But it’s not about the devices.
I think the whole e-book sector is hurt by both fragmented book access (caused by the insistence on balkanized DRM) and an utter failure to explain to the vast majority of readers why they would possibly want a dedicated device to read digital books. BN has failed to compete on the book access front, and none of them has really done much on the “why an e-reader?” front.
Sure, if you’re also a techie you do a little research and discover that e-ink is vastly more paper-like and therefore easier on the eyes, readable outdoors, etc. Maybe you also look at some of the studies about reading on screens and realize that the downsides seem to relate largely to scrolling rather than page turning, distractions on the reading device, and eye strain from glowing screens. If you think about how an e-ink reader differs from a general-purpose phone or tablet, you realize that a dedicated e-ink reader solves all those things. But you’re never going to run into an add in your social media feed, much less a 30-second spot in the middle of your evening sitcom or news program, explaining how a Nook, a Kindle, or a Kobo gives you the best aspects of both paper and digital reading. Any of the vendors could do this, but none of them have bothered to.
Specific to Nook, well: DRM, library access, and book store size. DRM mostly because it forces the other two to matter. If you’ve gotten as far as understanding why you might want an e-reader but you’re not the kind of person who’s willing to dig around on the Internet for information about how to defeat the industry’s efforts to force you to buy your books and your reader from the same company, then access to books is going to be a much bigger purchase consideration than the minor differences between devices that are all built around whatever the current-generation panel from EInk might be. Sure, there are differences in the front lights, buttons, and the software that provides the reading interface, but those all pale before the question of whether you can even get the stuff you want to read onto the device.
Everyone talks about the size of the book stores, but, I bet library access is an even bigger question for prospective buyers. The set of avid readers who can afford to buy every book they read is pretty small, especially once you realize DRM has 100% eliminated the used/resale market. And there, Kobo comes out ahead, with Amazon close behind and Nook running a distant … third? I’m almost certain you can do it…
Most libraries that offer an ebook collection use Libby/Overdrive. Kobo has always had the best integration there – if your library offers a Libby collection, you can log in on your Kobo reader with your library card using the same username/card number and password that you would use to place a hold on a paper book. You can browse, borrow, place holds, and pick them up right there on the device. Or do all that in the app or web site and still have the books wirelessly sync to the reader. And in 2025, I can still do that on my 2015 Kobo despite the switch to the “Libby” app. If you’re using a Kindle you have to browse and borrow on the app or web site, but once your Libby account is connected to your Amazon account at least the stuff you check out still syncs to the device over wifi automatically. With other e-book providers for libraries, Kobo is as bad as Nook is with everything, but at least it’s possible. Kindle simply doesn’t work.
The Nook experience with libraries relies on the library’s e-book collection provider supporting Adobe Digital Editions. Libby does for the vast majority of titles, and so does Cloud Library. But you have to dig around on the support pages for Nook, your library, and Adobe to figure out that it works at all. And once you do, you discover that to check out a book you’ll have to install the Adobe software on your desktop/laptop, “activate” your reader with your Adobe account, and plug the e-reader in to your desktop/laptop every time you want to get a newly checked-out book onto it. It’s certainly better than not having any library support, but even if you got as far as figuring that all out and were sure you could do it, the other two experiences sound a lot nicer.
Nook then loses out further with the fact that their store catalog has fallen to 3rd place behind Amazon and Kobo. On top of that, they have no answer to Kindle Unlimited and Kobo Plus, where at least an affordable monthly fee gives you un-metered access to a lot of reading material. Sure, at least for a while they offered unlimited reading on a Nook device while you were on store WiFi at a BN store, but who is going to plan to do all their reading at a store rather than at home, on the bus, etc?
So yeah. As a device to hold in my hand and read from, I’ve got nothing against the Nook GlowLight series. But I’m really only considering the tradeoffs between Kindles and Kobos.
Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight was peak Nook and great for the time. I really loved that thing. Instead of building on their success, they outsourced and commodified and neglected it. The apathy about Nook at retail locations doesn’t help. They still buy decent hardware, but they aren’t even keeping up with the low effort competition in overall product and user experience. I still turn on my GlowLight 4 once in a while, remember why I don’t and then turn it back off. My complaints are the same as everyone else’s. Kindle and Kobo and PocketBook and Huawei and Onyx all work better with longer battery life.