![]() It’s the difference between reading a hardcover and a mass-market paperback. Really the only difference is that you end up turning pages more often. The refresh rate is on par with offerings from Amazon and Kobo, as is the resolution. It’s plenty of space for reading a novel, though. I’d expected the screen to feel dinkier, given how very small it is (there’s less screen real estate here than on the iPhone 13 Pro Max). Actually reading a book on the GlowLight 4 is, for the most part, unproblematic. On the bright side, most of these random issues seem to happen while browsing the device. ![]() The Nook GlowLight 4 is small and the screen is even smaller. Out of the box, at least, the GlowLight 4 has some pretty significant kinks to work out. We can’t bank on fixes becoming available at all, really. Software updates could remedy some of these problems, but when that might happen is unknowable. On the whole, navigating is seamless, yes, but frequent bugs and crashes plague the operating system, at times making the device feel almost useless. Unfortunately this software ease does not extend to every corner of the GlowLight 4. You can page through them with the physical buttons or with a tap. It’s clear Barnes & Noble has experience with making e-reader software rather than continuous scrolling, for example - which doesn’t usually translate well to E Ink - menus are split into separate screens. The Nook’s proprietary software is quite easy to navigate, even on the GlowLight 4’s smaller screen I’ve never found myself confused about where to go next or how to find a menu. The reading experience and, more generally, the Nook software, is vastly unchanged from previous models. Once again I thought this unnecessary at first once again it proved itself to be much more useful than I imagined. Rather than fumbling around on the touchscreen to return to the home screen, you can just navigate there with one click. The home button - a Nook logo - is similarly convenient. Switching from a right-hand-only grip to one in my left hand is seamless because of those extra buttons. Keeping the doubled pairs of buttons at first seemed a strange choice to me (I never found myself wishing for more than one pair), but in practice the extra set is very useful. The physical buttons are solid and clicky and generally quite responsive. Otherwise, though, I really do like the choices Barnes & Noble has made here. The Nook is not the sturdiest e-reader hardware I’ve ever held. We only include products that have been independently selected by Input's editorial team. Input may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article. That return is the right direction for the brand, though sometimes it does feel like the Nook GlowLight 4 was scooped right out of 2014. It is, instead, a return to the Nook I held gingerly at Barnes & Noble all those years ago. The new Nook GlowLight 4 is, to my great pleasure, nothing like Lenovo’s Nook. As I found out when reviewing Lenovo’s Nook 10-inch HD Tablet earlier this year, a dedicated reading app does not an e-reader make. The switch to tablet-style e-readers never quite worked out, either. The Nook, I know now - like most of the established bookstore industry - couldn’t keep up with Amazon. I know now, with the benefit of more market knowledge and hindsight, that it was around this time that Barnes & Noble pivoted away from creating proprietary E Ink devices, switching instead to Samsung-made tablet hybrids. By then e-readers were more popular than ever. It came as something of a surprise to me when, returning home from college one summer, I noticed the displays had disappeared. The E Ink screen was nothing short of revolutionary to me. When Nook displays began popping up at each store (around 2010) I always took a few minutes of my trips to try the nascent e-reader out. I spent many collective hours of my teenage years wandering the aisles of Barnes & Noble.
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