Barnes and Noble officially announced the new Nook Touch with GlowLight today. It is up for pre-order right now from Barnes and Noble with a release date of May 1st.
The new Nook Touch is pretty much a twin to the original Nook Touch in size, shape, and functionality, but it comes with a nifty reading light built-in for reading at night.
Surprisingly, the GlowLight doesn’t appear to be Flex Lighting as was expected. Instead it is something Barnes and Noble created themselves. You can see where there is a small LED light strip along the top edge where it is brighter (see the videos below, not the Photoshopped marketing photos).
The GlowLight is turned on and off by holding the Nook’s “n” button below the screen. And there’s also a brightness adjuster accessible in the menu to set the brightness at the level you want it.
The light doesn’t seem to have a huge affect on the battery. B&N claims the Nook Touch with GlowLight can get over 1 month of battery life per charge when using the light, 2 months when not using it, the same as the original Nook Touch. That’s when reading for half an hour per day.
Aside from the light, the only differences between the GlowLight Nook and the original is the the new one is slightly lighter—about half an ounce—and it has a light-colored border instead of black. The new Nook also comes with a built-in anti-glare screen protector to aid with the GlowLight.
The original Nook Touch still sells for $99 new, $79 refurbished (sometimes less), and the GlowLight Nook sells for $139. That seems kind of expensive for a light—a lot of people will still probably get the non-lighted Nook and save $40, but the new one also comes with a power adapter that costs $10 extra with the other Nook, and it has the built-in screen protector, so that offsets the extra cost somewhat.
Here are a couple of videos showing the GlowLight in action.
Doesn’t the power adapter come free with the regular nook touch also? My refurbished unit came with one…
They used to come with a power adapter before B&N dropped the price from $139 to $99.
Will this Nook be able to be hacked to run Android in the same way as the current Simple Touch, as featured on this blog? Or have they changed the software in any way?
The new Nook will likely require a new rooting package to accommodate for the hardware and software changes for the GlowLight.
Any hint on it coming to the UK? Or any of the Nooks doing so?
Actually they have been hinting at bringing the Nook brand to the UK. It should happen later this year if it’s ever going to happen. B&N may try to partner with a UK bookstore like Waterstones.
The anti-glare film helps with the light, I’ve heard. I doubt it affects contrast at all. All the early reviewers have been impressed, but then again I bet they rarely have used the original Nook Touch if at all.
I’ll post an in-depth review and comparison at the beginning of May.
They say that they added an “anti-glare” coating to the screen, but I wonder if this is just a fancy way to explain a greyer screen/text contrast? I would only get one if the text looks as great as it does on the original NT.
Yeah, let’s focus on coloured and lighted screen instead of trying to get a decent pdf reader without ghosting and with a good touch response. Most of us will never need light… that’s just marketing, IMHO.
This looks promising and will probably make Triton more feasible since the colors should be more vibrant with extra lighting. In the video, it looks like the lighting is accomplished via 6 to 8 LEDs at the top of the screen. Nathan should have this figured out for us in early May.
I think 139$ is so expensive for a light. if it has not got more option than previous one for reading PDFs such as landscaping,…, I think a person should be crazy to pay money for it.
Not so crazy Mo if you have priced the cost of quality lights that clip on to these devices that get lost easily or break.