Barnes and Noble has launched the Nook Color in the US this week, a full-colour 7-inch Android tablet PC offering the option of reading books, magazines and newspapers, in addition to viewing videos and running apps.

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color will go on sale in the US on November 19, priced at $250 (£158). No word as yet on plans for a UK release of Nook Color. So this could well be a good excuse to make that pre-Xmas shopping trip to New York you've been thinking about…

Glare-free screen

Specs wise, the Nook Color features aseven inch 1024x600 full-color LCD touchscreen manufactured by LG, and is accelerometer-enabled – a feature which works in both portrait and landscape modes.

The screen is covered with a glare-free laminated coating, in order to provide readers with a more comfortable reading experience than tablet PCs with glossy screens such as the Apple iPad.

The Nook Color is also very light, weighing in at under a pound and measuring less than half an inch at its thickest point. It also features 8GB internal memory – more than enough for use as an e-reader – and a microSD slot for additional storage.

The Nook Color is Wi-Fi enabled, but not 3G-enabled, with what the manufacturer claims to be a solid eight-hour battery life.

Magazine publishers on board

Barnes and Noble is offering full support for the two million and more 'nookbooks' already in its online library. Additionally, magazine publishers including Conde Nast and Hearst, are also on board as partners.

The Nook Color will offer over 100 color newspapers and magazines including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Elle.

You can also use the Nook Color as a music player while you are reading. The device will NOT use Flash, but will support most other video formats.

In terms of apps, perhaps one of the most interesting at launch is a reader's social networking application called "Nook Friends" – so you can share your thoughts with your online book club friends.

http://www.techradar.com/news/portable- ... der-903626

I get more and more interested in these things, but they need to sort out the book prices

Android powered and will un videos and apps.

Sounds good, though I'd like to see a review of it, including battery life.

Weight: Kindle 240g - Nook 447g
Baterry life: Kindle 30 days - Nook 8hrs
Price: Kindle $139 - Nook $249

Is colour really that important to people? I would rather have light reader with long bat. life myself but if you insist on colour you might as well get a proper slate for $500 rather than this cut down version of one. And if 8 hours of bat life is enough for you then you don't intent to take it outside of you house anyway so the size won't matter to you much I guess...

My first thoughts also. Of course, if it turns out to be a super-flexible cheap alternative to the iSlate then it might find a geek market; but as an eBook? 8 hours isn't even close to one measly day!

After readin with the Kindle I would say that any device that doesn't use some sort of e-ink is not an e-reader.

By using an LCD (and therefore a backlight) in my eyes it becomes a cheap tablet computer.

I'd rather have a colour screen, as I have some photographic ebooks, which just don't "look right" in black and white.