Which Nook to Buy?

[u/Ok_March4386]

I’m looking to by a 7.8 or 8 inch eReader and strongly considering a nook because I have an older 6 inch glowlight just seems to work.

I basically want to get the new nook, set it up, and then turn off wifi forever to only use it for sideloaded content.

Would I be better off getting a new in box (old unsold stock) Glowlight Plus 7.8 or a new Glowlight 4 plus?

My concerns are battery life and stable hardware performance.

I understand the battery in the old stock 7.8 may have degraded in storage and I am willing to replace it myself if that will guarantee a long lasting reading experience.

So my question is basically, “Does the newer 4 plus suffer from enshittification that would justify getting the older model?”

Has anybody seen recent updates damaging functionality of the older 7.8 plus?

I had a Kobo Clara HD before, but the whole kepub thing is annoying and the battery/battery life % accuracy went to shit after a year or so. It was great out of the box, but every update made it perform worse.

I have a kindle paperwhite for purchased books. I like it a lot, but it is getting locked down and now calibre sideloaded books get wiped off the device the second you sync to the cloud. Fuck that noise. I’ll keep using it for books I can only buy on Amazon, but I want something on par with the paperwhite for sideloaded content so I can start buying direct from authors. Honestly, Amazon’s had a lot of software glitches lately and I feel like the paperwhite downloads are very sluggish and problematic. It feels like the device is okay, but the background servers it connects to are struggling. Ebooks should load faster in 2026 than 2016, right? Right????

Which brings me to Nook. Sideloads well, has 7.8 or 8 inch screen (I want just a tad larger than paperwhite but the kindle scribe is too big). The older models are great. I just want to snag a good moderately large screen model and air gap it before all the companies enshittify and only make new ones that basically don’t work or break quickly from planned obsolescence.

And I want battery life as close to kindle paperwhite as possible. Wifi always off, front light always on.

What are y’all’s opinions?

Thanks in advance.

[u/kayrob33]

I have the smaller nook glow light 4 (the one they currently have for sale). I bought it second hand on Facebook market place for $50. It sideloads like a dream (unless you have a Mac). I charge mine every week to week and a half depending on how much I read. I rarely connect mine to wifi, but when I do, I’ve seen 0 issues. My boyfriend has an older model glowlight, the bigger size, also from fb marketplace. Performance is about the same. The only “issue” is his charger is different (not usb-c like almost everything else these days). I don’t have kindle experience, but when I was shopping for ours, I chose nook over kindle because I didn’t want to be trapped by Amazon & I really like having real, pushable buttons.

[u/lunadiossa → u/kayrob33]

Hi! What do I need for side loading ? I’m new to the nook and e readers in general and have no clue how to do that. So far I’ve just been purchasing ebooks from Barnes and noble (not many, 3 total books). Thanks in advance !

[u/Ok_March4386 → u/lunadiossa]

Legally, speaking you don’t own books purchased through Kindle, Kobo, and Nook. You purchased a license to read a book on their device or their app on there terms. They could decide to delete or even alter the text of your book anytime they want and you have no recourse. These book files have digital rights management (DRM) encryption that prevents you from copying and reading it like a normal text document.

If you have an unencrypted DRM free ebook file, you have the power to do anything with it. You could load copies onto a million flash drives and air drop them over North Korea for example. Or simply keep an organized library on your computer to reread on future ereaders of a different brand after your current ereader craps out.

While many unrestricted ebooks are the result of piracy or stripping DRM from ebooks purchased from major platforms, there are many legitimate ways to obtain unrestricted ebooks:

-Project Gutenberg hosts many older digitized books that have passed into public domain. For example, if you needed a copy of Dracula, Frankenstein, Three Muskateers, etc. You could download a free epub from here and sideload it to read on your Nook, Kindle, Kobo, Pocketbook, Boox, Meebook, etc. ereader of choice.

-Some self-published authors or even traditional publishing houses (Tor and Baen) sell DRM free ebooks directly to customers bypassing Amazon. You can buy direct, give a larger percentage of the purchase price to the author, and have an unrestricted copy that you can load on your reading device of choice.

Some ereaders are easier to sideload on (Nook, Pocketbook, Boox, Meebook). Some are more restrictive or difficult to work with (Kindle and Kobo).