NookColor Real Usage Review
Okay, I will give my experience with other items in the category to help you decide as well as my experience with the NookColor since launch day. First overall it's Great, and a little rough around the edges.
I first purchased two Ipads, gave the wife one and kept one, Jailbroke it, loaded it with kindle/nook/ibooks, and a ton of apps and such. But I also have an Archos 5 Android, Droid X, Nokia Booklet and Toshiba NB305. So with that said the Ipad was a great internet tablet and Ereader, so I decided to sell it while I could still get premium "I paid $450 plus tax and got $450 back) so used it for a few months for the tax... call it a rental fee.
So once I sold I I still needed an Ereader for textbooks and school so in came the Kindle 3, loved the style but "Once you go color" it's hard to go back. So as long as you/your wife has no issue with LCD for 203 hrs. of viewing then color is appreciated.
So I sell the Kindle for $110 purchased for $100 off Craigslist. Found a great deal on the Velocity Cruz Tablet for $209 from Sears, as oppose to the $299 so figured let's try this should be decent for my usage? WOW BAD IDEA, no market and can't even side load many apps., most failed to install.
So, I load market4archos on my Archos 5 and download kindle app and I'm back in business. Returned the Cruz and picked up the Hauwei S7 from Bestbuy. $299!!! LOVED, LOVED, LOVED it... but the battery life was too short and the resistive screen is not as good as the one on the Archos. The
S7 has market, takes most apps, has a snap dragon processor, i picked up a prepaid sim for T-Mobile and since this is a phone, it picked up and allowed me to do prepaid web2go internet, $1.49 a day. So on t-mobile the internet on prepaid phones is 1.49 for a 24 hr usage!!! I got a cheap 15 prepaid phone, activated it put the sim in the S7 and went right to web2go, go on line and everything worked over Edge!!!! In the end the battery life and screen 800*480 resistive, are its ONLY issues.
So by this time the NookColor is coming out so I figured lets try this, I figured it would do what the Ipad was doing and the size should work well, since that's the thing I loved about the Kindle. The NookColor has a screen as good as the Ipad, is just as good of a color Ereader, and the web experience was great, the music, from microSD, Pandora and video playback from my media card worked great. Youtube was decent from the mobile m.youtube site. So I was beginning to feel like, WOW i'm a root away from just was I'm looking for. It's slightly wider than the Galaxy Tab which i considered and played with but not for it's current price. NookColor was an app store of Root away from perfection.
Now the negatives! Day 1 It froze on me so I had to reboot I figured I'm over working the little guy then later in the day I had a Typical Android force close. Day 2 it completely locked up, screen would not respond, I shut it down and turned back on 3 times it would start up right back into that frozen state, I left the house and went to dinner with the wife came back, she picked up her Ipad, i picked up the Nook and it was HOT and still frozen, i turned it off again and back on, this time after a longer than usual boot time it worked but the battery was almost fully discharged? I have no idea what it was doing when it was frozen but it ate the battery up. So I surfed a few site and plugged it in, and went to my other gadgets for the night. Day three I'm considering if I should return it, exchange it for a new one on what.
Overall, it's a great piece of hardware but I'm a little nervous. I have the Bestbuy blacktie protection so worst case I play with it and return or it breaks and get my $30 worth, which I WILL use at some point nomatter what
. I can say that I really want this thin to be the winner it seems like, and I've gone thru enough to know what a bad product looks like and this is not it, yet there is a but..... I would get it again for myself but would I get it for the wife?? That depends, my wife like stuff that just works? Thus I held off and got her the Ipad after I knew it had been Jailbroken and I could set it up for her had it over and never have to here from her again about it. She carries a blackberry tour, because it works, and hates all my netbooks because of there "issues" so carries an HP business class notebook. She hated the kindles screen, again it's hard to go back to black and white after color, but I think there will be some growing pains like the iphone or ipod touch when they first arrived without the app store.
It's a phone ride for a techie like myself, but I simply say know what your wife wants and make sure it's a simple ereader for now, with some internet browsing and she is good. The potential is FABULOUS it seems.
I have been reading a ton of reviews and most have been positive but you just never know. I wanted to get some real user reviews. I have thought about the kindle but the Magazines and color aspect really get me. She loves to read magazines to as well as would probably use it in the kitchen when she downloads cookbooks. I was going to make her a Stainless Steel Stand etched with her name on it. Plus the other "tablet" features seem cool. The Kindle does seem good to though. Do the non-color graphics not seem weird or cheesy? Thanks guys for your answers. This is helping me a lot.
But side-loading the Kindle app is a novel idea and I like it.