In news I was not expecting to write anytime soon, Barnes & Noble has a new eReader.

The new NOOK GlowLight 4 features a 6 inch E Ink display with 300 pixels per inch, a front-lit display with adjustable color temperature, physical page turn buttons and a touchscreen display, plus a USB-C charger. It’s now available for $150 in stores and from the B&N website.

That makes the new model $30 more than the previous-gen NOOK GlowLight 3, but version 4 has a few key upgrades including:

  • 32GB of storage (up from 8GB)
  • USB-C port (rather than micro USB)
  • Smaller design with slimmer bezels

Unfortunately the wireless capabilities are still capped at 802.11b/g/n and the battery life seems to have taken a step back: Barnes & Noble is promising up to a month of reading time on a charge which sounds pretty good until you notice that the NOOK GlowLight 3 was supposed to get up to 50 days of battery life.

I guess something had to give when the company reduced the physical dimensions of its flagship eReader.

If you’re wondering how the new NOOK GlowLight 4 stacks up against the competition, it has a smaller screen than Amazon’s 6.8 inch Kindle Paperwhite, and it lacks the water resistance that Amazon’s eReader has.

But the NOOK GlowLight 4 is competitively priced. Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite starts at $140 for a model with 8GB of storage and ads on the lock screen. Removing the ads raises the price by $20. And if you want 32GB of storage you’ll need to pay at least $190 for a Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition.

In a press release, B&N refers to the GlowLight 4 as the second NOOK released this year, but the other model was actually just a Lenovo tablet with the NOOK software pre-installed.

The last actually new eReader the company released was the 2019 NOOK GlowLight Plus, which sells for $200 and features a 7.8 inch display, IPx7 water resistance, and… just 8GB of storage, a micro USB charger, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi.

This article was originally published December 1, and last updated December 8, 2021. 

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4 replies on “B&N NOOK GlowLight 4 eReader coming December 8 for $150”

  1. i really like my kobo sage bookreader – you can change one line and connect it to calibre web selfhosted webapp and then just pull books from z-library. very cool

    and kobo sage is 8 inches unlike these tiny 6 inch devices – i dont get why they manufacture them might as well read on the phone

  2. hello guys, sry for my english, I dont understand what Glowlight mean. Glowlight is = to Backlight or Front light? or what kind light position is?

    1. kiu said: “hello guys, sry for my english, I dont understand what Glowlight mean. Glowlight is = to Backlight or Front light? or what kind light position is?”

      It has nothing to do with the screen backlight. It is just the model name, nothing technical. Some otherwise useless Marketing person gets paid to come up with confusing-misleading names like “NOOK GlowLight Plus”. I would much prefer B&N fire that Marketing person, reduce the reader price by one dollar, and name the thing “2021-12-08_BN-Reader_v1.0”.

      1. Thanks mate, I also notice that other brands are using that term too: ”GlowLight” yes is very confusing.

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