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Nook Glowlight Plus Now Available – Waterproof, Dust-Proof, 300ppi Screen, and only $129

nook glowlight plus handAs I predicted last week, Barnes & Noble has launched its newest ereader, the Nook Glowlight Plus, and it’s a better device than I was expecting.

Barnes & Noble’s newest ereader may be hitting shelves about six months behind its competitors, but that doesn’t mean that B&N was letting the dust gather – in fact, just the opposite. The Nook Glowlight Plus can match the Kobo Glo HD and the new Kindle Paperwhite in many respects, and it can go one step better.

This $129 ereader features a 300ppi Carta E-ink screen (with frontlight and touchscreen), Wifi, a metal rear shell, and six weeks of battery life, but it does have one feature that its mid-market competitors lack.

B&N reports that this ereader meets the IP67 certification, meaning that it can be submerged in fresh water for up to 30 minutes at a maximum depth of 1 meter. It’s also dust-proof.

While the premium-priced Kobo Aura H2O can boast the IP67 certification, and Tolino’s new Vision can make a similar promise (albeit one without certification), the Nook Glowlight Plus is the only device at the $129 price point that goes above and beyond in guaranteeing that it can survive rough usage.

That said, I do think it’s a shame that B&N didn’t put similar effort into the storage capacity. The Glowlight Plus has no card slot and only limited storage. Of the 2.5GB internal storage, only 500MB is available to the user. The rest is reserved for B&N-sold content.

Update: While B&N’s website said that most of the storage was reserved, the Glowlight Plus I have in front of me says that I have access to 2.8GB of storage.

As I maintain my own ebook library, the storage problem is enough to turn me off of the  Glowlight Plus. But if it doesn’t bother you, this ereader is available in B&N stores today, and online at Nook.com.

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Comments


Feda October 21, 2015 um 9:48 am

Dead on Arrival


Paul October 21, 2015 um 9:50 am

Well now we know what Amazon has been selling the Paperwhite 3 for $99. Question, I already have a Glowlight and I ordered a Kindle PW3 yesterday. Is it worthwhile canceling that order and getting this instead? Or keep the PW?

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 9:56 am

I’d keep the PW, and wait for early reports on the new Nook.


Paul October 21, 2015 um 9:53 am

One final thing. If you’re a BN member you also get 10% off the price, bringing the price down to $116.


Paul October 21, 2015 um 10:03 am

Thanks!

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 10:08 am

Welcome, Paul.

Let me elaborate on that recommendation. We know the PW3 is a very good device at a great price and a good return policy. The Glowlight Plus might be a good device, but we won’t know that until user reports come in.

So I say hold on to the sure bet. You can always return the PW3, but you probably won’t get that price again.


Anne October 21, 2015 um 10:08 am

What a shame about the partitioning. I wonder if it will be able to be hacked. Was the previous version hacked to make the storage more useable?


Julie October 21, 2015 um 10:17 am

Nate other tech blogs are saying the opposite of what you are reporting on the reserved memory. A couple say you get two gigs of user do what you want with it memory. I am going to my local BN when it opens to see what the real answer to that is.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 11:33 am

@ Julie

I reported what B&N said on its website.

I now have one on my desk. Just a second while I check the storage.

Edit: Yep, the B&N website was wrong. I have access to the full storage.


~B October 21, 2015 um 10:17 am

"That said, I do think it’s a shame that B&N didn’t put similar effort into the storage capacity. The Glowlight Plus has no card slot and only limited storage. Of the 2.5GB internal storage, only 500MB is available to the user. The rest is reserved for B&N-sold content."

It’s really too bad. I find the device interesting, but the storage restrictions kill it for me.


Nook GlowLight Plus is ‘First Waterproof, Dustproof Nook’ and sells for $130 | TeleRead October 21, 2015 um 10:19 am

[…] buyback offers hope for Barnes & Noble’s future, by TeleRead Editor Chris Meadows. Also see Nate’s writeup of the new […]


Sarah October 21, 2015 um 11:08 am

Well, my Simple Touch with Glowlight died a few days ago, so I will probably get one of these. I think limiting storage for non-B&N content is annoying (I usually buy from Google Play), but at the same time, I have never put an SD card in a dedicated ereader. I do wish my Kindle Fire had an SD card slot, but for movies/games. Most of my ebooks are from OverDrive, so they expire anyway. I use multiple devices (still love my Sony PRS-T1), so my library is on my computer and I transfer/delete as necessary. What I think I’ll miss from the Simple Touch are the physical page turn buttons and the shape/material of the device’s back.


Liz October 21, 2015 um 11:30 am

I will have to check this out at my local store. I like the look of this device much better than the Glowlight. No problem with the storage for me. I was never able to develop the patience for curating my own ebook library. Supposedly this device also has the new Readouts feature so that is plus since I really do like that new feature. Price point isn’t bad either.


Name (Required) October 21, 2015 um 12:03 pm

Nate, now that you have one in your hands I am eagerly awaiting your preliminary review.


Frank October 21, 2015 um 12:04 pm

@Nate
Did you sideload some ebooks to see if the user can utilize the all of storage?
The first Glowlight certainly restricted how much storage the user could use.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 12:23 pm

@ Name I’m going to post something this evening.

@ Frank I’m testing that right now by sideloading a few video files. The total size is over 2GB, and if they are copied over then we’ll have our proof.


Steve October 21, 2015 um 12:54 pm

Do you have the size specs? They’re nowhere to be found on the B&N website.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 1:06 pm

@ Steve Here’s the fact sheet.


Julie October 21, 2015 um 1:07 pm

Nate-
I ended up buying one. I love the build on this compared to the simple touch plastic and that rubber crap they had on the last device. My impressions are they did a way better job on this one. The metal style backing, Even the light itself displays better, The SD card slot I don’t care if it isn’t there i never used it much, but this is a huge improvement in my opinion.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 1:44 pm

I’m not so impressed, Julie. I think it feels cheap, and I don’t like th sharp edges.


Purple lady October 21, 2015 um 1:54 pm

Can you copy B&N books from the device to your pc? Can you Alf the books that have drm?


Basem October 21, 2015 um 2:21 pm

It seems nicer than the previous Glowlight (that one had poor build and they even, oddly, sold coloured bands to replace the rubber casing). They’ve returned to making nice covers, after neglecting the previous generation (the previous generation had those overpriced and useless clip-on covers). Everything else isn’t that innovative, in terms of hardware, it is just keeping up with Kobo and Amazon (the ambient light looked impressive from the CNET video). I also wish they would have sold this as an 9 inch device too. The real issue is the firmware and functionality; the previous Nooks hardly improved in terms of firmware since the Simple Touch.


Basem October 21, 2015 um 2:39 pm

Well, the waterproof & dust-proof features, I believe, are only available on the more premium 7 inch Kobo Aura H2O and the Paperwhite or even the Voyage don’t even offer those features.


~B October 21, 2015 um 3:07 pm

B&N has now updated the description on their site to indicate the storage isn’t separated.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 3:11 pm

@-B

And I can confirm that I loaded at least 2.4GB of content on to my GLP.


Suz October 21, 2015 um 5:58 pm

I was the first one at our local BN store to pick up the device. I really do not care that it does not have expandable storage. I wanted it to be able to read the 600 plus BN books I have. It was easy to set up, found wifi without problems, downloaded books without problems. When it started it was at 52 percent battery charge and took a couple of hours to go to 100 percent. The print is very noticeably sharper than the former Glowlight but the whole time I was reading I kept thinking Kobo. The screen looked very Kobo like with the title constantly portrayed, the amount if blank space and the weight of the fonts were very thin compared to the first Glowlight. I use Georgia and it just didn’t look the same. I think the font size on the large setting worked better on the Glowlight than the Glowlight Plus. The bezel is textured which I think is nice but it is not truly white when you have overhead lights or lamps on – it comes across as yellow which takes some getting use to. I really like that it did away with the swipe to wake. You just have to press the on button to wake it and the light appears to always be on. On my device the light seems very even – not truly cool white but not as warm as the first Glowlight. It is very lightweight and I like the cover though I know I will miss the built in stand function they had with the covers for the first Glowlight. Still playing with it but I would definitely recommend it because of the higher resolution.


Jeani October 21, 2015 um 7:50 pm

Hey Nate,

I keep getting a server error when trying to search, click on the Reader Resources link, or access past articles through a search engine. Could you check this out?

Error message:
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator and inform them of the time the error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Nate Hoffelder October 21, 2015 um 7:57 pm

Hi jean,

I had broken something major. It should be fixed now.


Jeani October 21, 2015 um 8:27 pm

Yup, everything’s back up now!


Schickes Design und Wasserschutz: Barnes & Noble präsentiert Nook Glowlight Plus – eBook-Fieber.de October 22, 2015 um 8:10 am

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Steve October 23, 2015 um 3:58 pm

B&N may finally have a hit. It’s actually sold out on their website now.


Sarah October 30, 2015 um 4:09 pm

Well, I bought one and had to take it to a B&N store to exchange it the next day. After I charged it and went through set-up, the touch screen stopped responding. I couldn’t find a way to reboot or power down without the touch screen. The new one is better. It’s a little glitchy but overall it works as expected. I don’t like the metal edge, but I like the textured front.

The really, really unfortunate thing about this model, however, is the lack of support for library ebooks. ADE doesn’t see the device, so you cannot transfer ebooks downloaded from OverDrive. It’s incredible to me that they didn’t test this, or if they did decided it didn’t matter.


Beth October 31, 2015 um 11:15 am

Does this have google play? My Nook HD just died and I’d like to replace it with something that has E ink. I have a lot of kindle books also. That’s why I liked the HD. I could use both amazon and B&N markets. Thank you!

Nate Hoffelder October 31, 2015 um 11:17 am

Not yet, no. Hackers are working in that direction, but we’re not there yet.


Beth October 31, 2015 um 11:32 am

Thank you! My old Nook died yesterday so I may hold off replacing it.


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