helps you find the perfect gadget. ver. 1.8.7

"Since the nook uses the same sort of E Ink panel as the Kindle – and most other ebook readers on the market – the actual reading experience is pretty familiar. Text is crisp and sharp-edged, with 2-3 font styles and different sizes supported, and since there’s no backlighting it’s an easier read than attempting to do the same with an LCD screen."

"Even though it’s exactly the same E Ink technology that the Kindle and Sony Readers use, the Nook’s screen is achingly slower than the Kindle’s. It takes nearly three seconds to turn a page — three times longer than the Kindle — which is really disruptive if you’re in midsentence."

"The E Ink display does a perfect, though predictable job of generating easy to see and easy to read text and images on the screen. In our tests -- and this may just be due to the Kindle we were using -- we felt it very slightly outperformed Amazon's option in contrast."

"Yes, the touch screen is more responsive than the laggy e-ink screen, and yes, you can flip through your reading collection Cover Flow-style, but you're just not going to get that buttery smoothness you encounter with the iPhone."

"The contrast of the display is on par with rival units from both Amazon and Sony, but the refresh rate is another story. We found the Nook’s refresh rate while updating information on the screen to be the slowest in the group. It’s not like you will be changing pages that often, but when you do, it can be tiring while waiting for the screen to change."

"In its 1.0 implementation, Nook is not as fast or as smooth as it should be, but already it's showing that the second screen is not a gimmick."

"Oddly enough, Barnes & Noble’s e-reader is the only one of the three to have nailed the most basic input action of all: turning pages."

"It's not exactly that fast of a device anywhere, color screen or otherwise, so you have to get used to all kinds of little pauses and punctuation in the experience."