Barnes and Noble is now selling the Nook Glowlight 4 e-reader in all of their bookstores and it is now available online. The company announced the new device on December 1st, and said it would be available to buy on December 8th, which is today. This new e-reader is faster and more robust than prior versions, thanks to the quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. I am still trying to confirm this new model is using the same E INK Carta 1200 e-paper panel that the new Paperwhite 11th generation is employing.
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.
The e-reader is available for $149 on the B&N website and in over 600 of their bookstores, all over the United States. There are plenty of new cases available, in a myriad of different colors. Will you buy the Nook?
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.
