Good e-Reader broke the story that Barnes and Noble was developing the Nook Glowlight 4 and it looks like all of our data was correct. The bookseller is going to be releasing this new e-reader on December 8th and will retail for $149.99. Customers will be able to purchase it at over 600 bookstores in the United States and online at BN.com. If you want to protect your Nook, there are a myriad of cases available for $19.99. They are available in brown, yellow, red, green, purple, and black.
The Barnes and Noble Nook Glowlight 4 features a 6 inch E INK Carta HD display with a resolution of 1440×1080 and 300 PPI. It will have a series of white and amber LED lights, so you can control the front-lit display and color temperature system. This will be customized with a two slider bars in the settings menu. There are physical page turn buttons on both sides of the screen, and they curl inwards, towards the back. At the bottom of the unit, is the home button, this is denoted by the N. If you press it, you will go back to the home screen.
Underneath the hood is an Allwinner B300 quadcore 1.5 GHZ CPU processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. You will be able to charge the reader with a USB-C cable, this is the first time B&N has ever employed a modern port on any of their E INK devices. It has Bluetooth 5.1 and WIFI to connect to the online bookstore, to purchase and download ebooks. The Nook has the ability to sideload in your own personal collection of digital content. It officially supports EPUB and PDF, you can also buy ebooks from other bookstores in these two formats and load them in via Adobe Digital Editions, since both formats handle digital rights management (DRM.) You can also borrow books from the public library with Overdrive, you would download them from the website and then sideload them with ADE. You should get around four weeks of battery life, thanks to the 1400 mAh battery.
“Barnes & Noble is now investing significantly in our NOOK line of products. The GlowLight 4 is the second NOOK device to launch this year as we set about to bring a new family of devices to our customers and to reinvigorate NOOK in the coming months and years,” said Barnes & Noble CEO, James Daunt. “The team is working steadfastly to develop new NOOK products, and we are delighted to see such a strong pipeline of innovation into 2022.”
Barnes and Noble is only selling this new Nook in the US, although it can be used worldwide. All you need a random US billing address and your own credit card. You can then buy and read ebooks from the Nook Bookstore, and also download free titles.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.