Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight shines

— -- Let there be light.

Barnes & Noble took that reader command to heart recently with the introduction of the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. The company's latest E Ink-based electronic reader is the first such dedicated reader to supply a built-in reading light. Folks who preordered the $139 paperback-sized device can expect to receive it any day now, ahead of schedule. Models with GlowLight should start hitting Barnes & Noble stores in limited quantities next week, with other retailers to follow.

Prior Nooks, as well as rival E Ink devices such as Amazon's market leading Kindle or the Sony Readers, do a superb job of making you forget that you're not reading on paper. As with a physical book, you have to read by a lamp or provide some other external light when in the dark.

By incorporating GlowLight technology into this latest model, Barnes & Noble beats competitors to the punch with a solution that works as promised. (Amazon won't say but is rumored to be working on similar technology.)

As I discovered reading in an otherwise pitch-black bedroom, the light is softer than the illumination from the kind of backlit LCD screen found on tablet computers. The Nook lights the screen uniformly without blinding you or disturbing your partner. I had no trouble making out text.

Like its predecessor, you can go to the next or previous page by swiping your finger on the 6-inch monochrome touch screen. The page turns are quick.

Another benefit inherent in E Ink displays compared to the screen technology found on tablet computers is that you can read outdoors on a bright day, without fretting about glare or barely visible text. With or without light the text on the Nook was crisp and easy on the eyes. The latest Nook also has a built-in anti-glare screen protector. Suffice to say, direct sun is challenging for tablets.

Of course, tablets such as the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's own Nook Tablet have many advantages over the gray-scale dedicated electronic readers, including color screens and much more versatile multimedia capabilities. Then again, they cost a lot more.

While battery life on tablets is measured in hours, E Ink devices can last days, weeks, even months between charges. Barnes & Noble says you can read a ½ hour a day on the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight for an entire month off a single charge, with the brightness level set to its default. I haven't had the reader long enough to test the claim.

To summon the light on the new Nook, hold down the "n" button below the screen for a couple of seconds and a light bulb icon appears. Do the same thing to shut off the light. Tap the bulb icon to bring up a setting and manually dim or raise the brightness level by sliding your finger. Unfortunately, the device cannot detect ambient room conditions to automatically adjust the intensity of the light. By default, the light will turn off after 5 minutes of inactivity but you can alter the setting.

In just about all other respects, the GlowLight model is similar to the Nook Simple Touch without the light. That light-free model remains in the Barnes & Noble lineup for $99 and is slightly heavier, 7.48 ounces vs. 6.5 ounces for the Glowlight model. Both models have 2 GB of internal storage, which holds about 1,000 books. You can expand that through a microSD slot.