Unboxing the Nook Color
Read my Amazon Kindle DX review and it’s clear that I’m neither an avid book reader, nor a fan of E-ink technology. But when Barnes & Noble recently discounted its Nook Color E-Book reader for $200, I decided to take the plunge.
See, the Nook Color is basically an Android tablet disguised as an E-book reader – complete with a 7″ glass capacitive color LCD touchscreen instead of an E-ink display. It’s already been hacked to run stock Froyo, Gingerbread, and even Honeycomb.
Take a look at my unboxing video, and expect some unboxing pictures & more coverage soon :)
Categories
Amazon, Android, Barnes & Noble, Google, Kindle DX, Nook Color, Unboxings, Video
tnkgrl Mobile: Tech that Matters 
You must install android…
I will. Didn’t you watch the video? :)
I have a Nook Color that I’ve also put Froyo on and I tried the Honeycomb build. I wasn’t telly sure if I could find a use for a tablet and the Nook Color seemed like a good value to find out. Since getting it I have really enjoyed the experience, especially the web browing. Since all of my apps transferred over from phone I already had some nice games that I enjoy playing. I recently bought my wife an ipad for her birthday and I am a little jealous of the extra screen size, but for the money the Nook Color is hard to beat.
Hey tnkgrl,
What camera do you use to take these pictures and videos with? These videos looks really good with continuous AF(?).
I’m kind of starting my own little blog as sort of a hobby as I don’t have a lot of time to devote to it with school and all (I’m 15) and I would like to start doing some hands ons.
So let me know!
Thanks :)
or if you can reccomend another one, that would be great as well. I understand you know your cameras :).
And by the way, great job on the Engadget Mobile Podcast. Keep it up! You’re all we have left now that Josh, Nilay, and Paul are all gone. :'(
When I started out I used cameraphones exclusively for videos and pictures – mostly high-end Nokias. The idea was to document phones with phones. The pictures came out great but videos were a problem because of lack of autofocus. Still the resulting VGA video looked decent. Then the iPhone 3GS came out, with touch to pre-focus for video so I was able to set the focus to macro before recording.
Eventually I wanted to crank things up a notch and decided to switch to an affordable point-and-shoot camera to get continuous autofocus. I also decided to stop holding the camera and I picked up a Gorillapod. The camera I’m using now is a refurbished $79 pink Sony DSC-W55. I records VGA MP4 video to a 2 GB MemoryStick Duo card with continuous autofocus. Most importantly, it has a macro mode for video.
Eventually I switched to a high-end point and shoot for my stills as well, mostly for speed and optical image stabilization. I settled on a $400 Canon s95 because of its low-light performance and optical image stabilization in macro mode – it’s great. I can nail almost every single shot now, whereas even with a good cameraphone I was always having to take 2-3 shots “just in case”.
The speed comes mostly from not having to sort through 2-3 shots for each when organizing the pictures on the computer later. I use an 8 GB EyeFi Pro X2 XD card with WiFi in the Canon s95, so it geo-tags and uploads shots directly to my computer. While the Canon s95 records 720p HD MP4 video, it does not have continuous autofocus during video, which is a major shame.
So I still use my Sony DSC-W55 for video. I hope that answers your questions :)
Thanks so much for actually replying tnkgrl!
I was curious about that as well, I’m also a little surprised that the S95 doesn’t have that feature. I figured I would need to get a handy dandy camera soon too.
I am hoping to get one of these little puppies. I too want to hack gingerbread or honeycomb on it. An instructional video of how you do it would be worth a million dollars to your fans! Also, I wanted to say I really enjoy the podcast. I will be closely following your videos to get your impression on the machine, but at the 200 dollar price point I can’t see how this isn’t the best near tablet out there. I guess I will just have to sell my ipod so I can get the money to get one of these things.
Definitely tell us how the hacking is coming? Running the rooted stock on my Nook Color right now — hacking it to get adhoc wireless support was especially fun, but got it working in the end.
Holding on to any purchase of a tablet pending you routing experience. No pressure…
I’ve got a Nook Color running Phiremod, which is a customized version of CyanogenMod’s Gingerbread build. This little thing is just amazing and performs like a champ! Totally sidelined my netbook for all websurfing, Twitter, RSS, still image and video viewing. Dropbox client is a must-have. (Oh, and it’s a very solid e-reader too!)
It’s been a while, tnkgrl! We are all waiting for the Official tnkgrl Root Your NookColor THIS Way post!
Good informative video. Thanks for your postings.
QUESTION: Do you recommend Nook Color over iPad and Amazon Kindle? And if I buy it (I like the price) how do I make it Android?
Anyone else have any advice on how to make the Nook Color be Android?
Here you go: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Barnes_%26_Noble_Nook_Color:_Full_Update_Guide