Joshua Topolsky:

Once you get the hang of the sys­tem it starts to make some sense, but it’s noth­ing we’d describe as intu­itive, and your rhythm is thrown off by one major fac­tor: the extremely slug­gish response of the device.

Compared to the Kindle the Nook is thicker, heav­ier and smaller: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.5-inch at 11.2 ounces. Screens: 6-inch 16-grayscale E Ink dis­play up top, 3.5-inch capac­i­tive touch TFT LCD down below. The 6-inch E Ink dis­play is just like what you see on the Kindle. No sur­prise since the two are essen­tially the same except for: the Nook was slightly slower at turn­ing pages com­pared to the Kindle.

The 3.5-inch LCD is unique to the Nook and works as “the pri­mary method of inter­act­ing with lists and read­ing selec­tions” and “your nav­i­ga­tor, your search box (with key­board), music player, and a Cover Flow-style book browser”. Because the slower E Ink dis­play is linked to the faster LCD you’ll need to get used to pauses here and there. Downward swipes on the capac­i­tive touch screen wasn’t rec­og­nized at times. Well, that’s the sum­mary of the dis­play por­tion of the review. It looks like the Nook was a solid first attempt by Barnes & Noble but will be let down by how slow it is.