Review Horizon

Nook Tablet is together with Kindle Fire one of the most eagerly awaited gadgets of the year. Barnes & Noble’s previous tablet, the Nook Color held an important record – the best selling tablet after Apple’s iPad and that is a not an easy feat considering how crowded the tablet market has become. It is obvious though that pricing correctly sells, and the original Nook Color was priced correctly, the HP Touchpad has been priced correctly ( ) during its fire sale and the current Nook Tablet is also priced correctly at $249. However, it is $50 more than Kindle Fire. Is it worth the extra money? How does it stand against its main competitor from Amazon? These are only some questions we’ll try to answer in this Nook Tablet Review. Read More…

History: A while ago Apple changed their App Store terms of service in order to force their 30 percent cut for not only applications bought through their store, but for everything bought through an application available in the App Store. As a direct result, Apple is forcing every eBook store including Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Kobo reader, etc to pay an initial 30 percent cut for every sale generated, just for the honor of being published in heir app store basically killing the market. Why? Because nobody has enough margins selling book to pay 30 percent to Apple and still making any profit.

The anti-competitiveness of this measure is appalling especially in a business where Apple is Read More…

True to their word to bring Kindle platform to everything including your toaster, Amazon launched Kindle app for HP’s newest tablet toy, TouchPad. The application is free and matches 100% the functionality found on other platforms like Android and iPhone / iPad. That means Amazon bookstore, synchronization across platforms, etc. The basics are there as well, including portrait / landscape support, text size and font selection, search, etc.

If you want to get yours, it is free via HP App Catalog. I got mine, let’s see how it performs.

TouchPad Kindle App Review

I will start by declaring that I love reading, and my daily commute by train gives me ample opportunities to follow my passion. That being said, I tried a number of reading devices, mostly to write reviews. I started with Nook (not the Nook Color), bought Kindle 2 and 3, Nook Color which I root Read More…

While initially it didn’t seem like Amazon will launch the special offers Kindle for the 3G model, it just happened. The reason could be the pressure from the newly launched Kobo Touch eReader and Nook Simple Touch for $139, or Amazon is looking for a way to keep their profit margins throughout the year without actually cutting the internal price. The new Kindle 3 – 3G model with advertisements in the screensaver went on sale yesterday for a lower price – $164, a $25 cut from the original price.

The opinions might differ about whether $164 is still a good price considering the advertisements, but there are two aspects we need to emphasize: The ads are never showed while reading, only when the device is off or as a screensaver so they should not interfere with your activity. Also, the first batch of advertisements  was quite interesting – with Roku media streamers for 50% off only for the owners of the Kindle with special offers, although we don’t know if Amazon intentionally took some loses just to promote the awesomeness of their ads loaded eReader.  Read More…

Just a day after Kobo announced their own version of touch enabled eReader, Barnes & Noble decided it is time to unwrap their new eReader device as well, and surprise, it also has touch screen capabilities (and at this point, Amazon HAS to come with something, either a new eReader or a tablet to stay in the game).

Hardware wise, Nook Touch has the exact same infrared touch technology announced by Kobo and surprises us with an incredible battery life (up to 2 month). The device is also much thinner and lighter than its predecessor – about 21% more compact (the keyboard is also on screen). The screen is also the same 6″ EInk Pearl found in both Kindle 3 and Kobo Touch released yesterday and at this point it is obvious that eReader hardware is heading toward commoditization with the main differentiation being the software layer and the store content and prices.

Like previous models, the new Nook Simple Touch is also based on Android, has 2GB of memory which can be expanded through the included microSD slot (up to an additional 32GB). The eReader includes WiFi support but no 3G. I assume B&N did their marketing research and realized that not that many people are actually using the 3G capability, although we wished they would have come with a 3G enabled model for those that actually would enjoy it.

You can pre-order now from B&N website for $139 and it will start shipping on June 10th. Nook Simple Touch will also sell at BestBuy, Staples, Walmart and other stores.

Head after the break for full technical specs. Keep in touch for our upcoming Nook Touch Review.

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Kobo was rather quiet lately in terms of new eReader models, but it was obviously working on something. Today, we can see the fruits of that work in the new Kobo Touch Edition eReader launched at only $129 ($10 gift card for ebooks also included). Displayed at BookExpo America for the first time, Kobo eReader Touch Edition brings a six inches eInk screen doubled by a touchscreen based on infra-red technology that does not lower the contrast of the screen like Sony eReaders. The new touchscreen also enables gestures (zoom and swipe) and features a new touch keyboard. Design wise, the new layout resembles the one from Apple (iPhone, iPad) which a unique button at the bottom to take you home.

If you remember the previous Kobo eReader models, they were rather slow and low contrast. The new model improves both with a new faster Freescale i.MX507 CPU which will greatly increase the page to page turn and a new generation of eInk Pearl (the same from Kindle 3) with a much greater contrast. Hardware wise, the reader can be charged via its microUSB connector and its 1GB internal memory can be upgraded via its included microSDHC memory slot. The eBook formats supported include ePub and PDF.

Kobo eReader Touch is also the first (at least if you believe Kobo’s announcement) to feature an international experience with several languages supported (English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian) and offering a local experience including local recommendations and local store experience. The social aspects are not forgotten either, you are able to use Twitter and Facebook straight from the device, and we have to admit that a touchscreen would greatly improve the user experience. And, if you need regular reminders that reading is good for you, Kobo’s Reading Life application tracks your activity — what, how much and how long a user reads — gives you awards based on the progress.

Check after the break for additional technical specifications. We’ll also try to get a sample for review as soon as possible. Read More…

Better known for its cheap photo frames, Pandigital started just a year or so ago to make eReaders. Their first one, Pandigital Novel 7 was only a partial success (see our Pandigital Novel 7 review) but now Pandigital is launching a new model, Pandigital Planet, a little bit more open but still without the official Android Market. Fortunately, it does run the SlideMe 3rd party app store and, presumably it will be able to run Amazon Android Market as well which is a major accomplishment.

Some early details leaked on FCC’s website, like 7″ large LCD screen, still 800×600 resolution, still the same crappy resistive touchscreen (when will they learn?) but a useful microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB cards, a USB 2.0 Host/OTG, microphone, a new HDMI output and dual cameras (back and front). The device will run Android 2.2 and it is potentially ripe for rooting. Since the device, even with HDMI out and dual camera, will still be marketed as an eReader, it will retain Barnes & Noble eBook store but will also add pre-installed apps like Facebook, virus protection (not sure how important that is in Android world at this point, whether it will be effective or just a marketing gimmick). Pandigital Planet also lists an interesting list of codec capability including MOV, MP4, DIVX / XVID, h264, h263, MPEG4, etc.

We got the full technical specs and some photos (see after the break)

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I just got my new iPad and beside installing various news apps and games, I wanted to transfer a lot of books. A quick check around and I realized Stanza is the best iPad eReader if you plan to use your own eBook collection. Most of the brand eReaders on iPad (Kindle, Nook, iBooks) are proprietary and won’t allow you to open files in more open formats (epub is one of them) so I downloaded Stanza.

By default, since iOS file system is not easily available, especially if you don’t jailbreak your device, Stanza prefers to get eBooks from online sources like ebookstores or free sources – Project Gutemberg, Random house Read More…

In an interesting turn of events, you can now get a cheaper Kindle 3 ($114 instead of $139, a $25 reduction in price – the deal only applies to WiFi only Kindle 3) if you are willing to support ads on homepage and screensavers. Amazon just launched a new program that covers $25 from Kindle 3 price by selling advertising space and whether this will be the future or not, remains to be seen. This could be immensely profitable for Amazon as $25 should be fairly easy to make by selling ad space, especially on a long-term use product as Kindle is, or it could backslash if the customers will reject the technology.

Amazon promises that the ads won’t interfere with your reading, being displayed only on Home screen and as screensavers. Beside ads, Amazon will send its own periodic deals like sales, coupons, etc and the the user will also have some limited control over what exactly the screensavers will show, for example setting preferences for landscapes, illustrations, travel, etc using a new app called AdMash. Among the first advertisement customers will be Buick, Chase, Olay and VISA. The first deals offered if you buy the “Special Offers Kindle” are:

• $10 for $20 Amazon.com Gift Card
• $6 for 6 Audible Books (normally $68)
• $1 for an album in the Amazon MP3 Store (choose from over 1 million albums)
• $10 for $30 of products in the Amazon Denim Shop or Amazon Swim Shop
• Free $100 Amazon.com Gift Card when you get an Amazon Rewards Visa Card (normally $30)
• Buy one of 30 Kindle bestsellers with your Visa card and get $10 Amazon.com credit
• 50% off Roku Streaming Player (normally $99)

Would you buy a cheaper ad supported Kindle if the advertisement will forever stay out of the book content? Meantime you can check our full featured Kindle 3 review.

Following the latest news from Barnes & Noble in which the giant book seller announced that Nook platform controls a quarter of the eBook market, the popular Nook Kids framework that proved very successful on Nook Color jumped the street (and the OS) to Apple iPad.

The application is completely free and allows access to over 12,000 children books supporting a number of interactive features including search, zoom, notes, multiple fonts, etc. Some eBooks take the degree of interaction even deeper with the help of AliveTouch technology which allow kids to interact with their picture books.

Like the initial  release on Nook Color, the iPad version of Nook Kids also comes with two free books to help you acquire the taste:  Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling and Fun Facts about Pets by Seymour Simon.

As we already mentioned, the application (and the initial two books) are free so there is no reason why you Read More…