NOOKed in Colour?

Barnes & Noble introduced their new eReader, the NOOKcolor, which is set to ship out around the 19th November.  What, if anything, makes it something new?

The NOOKcolor drops the e-Ink technology screen in favour of a 7″ VividView colour touch screen, which Barnes & Noble claim is capable of showing more than 16 million colours, affords an extra wide viewing angle and has been laminated with some type of film that reduces glare and eye strain.  The NOOKcolor weighs 15.8 ounces and comes with built-in WiFi, 8GB of memory and a microSD slot, but battery life, as one might expect, is significantly lowered from what buyers have come to expect from their eReader devices.  With WiFi turned off, the NOOKcolor promises only 8 hours of reading (with a sealed-in battery that begs an answer to estimated lifetime and would be enough to make more than a few prospective buyers take a step back and reconsider), but promotes itself as the first reading device to offer magazines (and newspapers) in rich, full colour.

While it’s not at the top of the features list–or even on it–one imagines that graphic novels might find a new electronic market to grow into that is somewhat more affordable than the iPad.  That’s if the device gains any popularity in the market.  The NOOKcolor supports PDF and ePub files, as well Word, Excel, and PowerPoint using built-in Quickoffice software.  It supports JPG, PNG, GIF, and BMP image files, plays video, MP3 music and comes with the Barnes & Noble LendMe app.  It also has social networking aspects allowing you to recommend books as well as posting excerpts to friends through Facebook or Twitter.  Despite going with Android 2.1, the NOOKcolor will have no Android market, with Barnes & Noble releasing some apps through its own store.

For those who haven’t even dipped their toes into the eReader market, is jumping e-Ink, into colour LCDs–which seem to circumvent the eReader’s original value as an indoor/outdoor glare-free reading device–the way to go?  I guess many of us will be waiting on the first wave of NOOKcolor owners to find out how the device measures up.

The device will be available in Barnes & Noble stores, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Books-A-Million, but at the moment you can pre order yours at the retail price of $249 direct from Barnes & Noble.