Nook Simple Touch upgrade hands-on (video)

The Tablet may have gotten most of the glory at today's Nook event, but there was plenty of love to go around across the line. The Color got some solid multimedia upgrades, courtesy of Hulu Plus, Pandora, Rhapsody and the like, and the Nook Touch -- now known as the Nook Simple Touch -- received a few bumps of its own, beyond that price drop to $99. The Nook Simple Touch 1.1 software upgrade brings among other things, longer battery life -- which, for obvious reasons, we can't actually test effectively at the moment. According to B&N, you should get two months of battery life reading an hour per day post-upgrade, versus up to two months reading half an hour each day pre-upgrade. The upgrade also promises a crisper display, and holding a pre- and post-upgrade Nook next to each other, the difference is certainly detectable. It's not a huge difference, but the slightly darker text does improve the reading experience, over all.

Also on the list of improvements is a faster turn rate. Indeed, there is a slight difference, with the updated reader scrolling through a bit faster (though the two readers did go back and forth as we had them scroll through a book) -- the upgrade, according to B&N, will save you a fraction of a second per page, so don't expect to be wowed on that front. Both readers have roughly the same refresh rate, doing a full page refresh every six pages or so. All in all, some welcome changes to a nicely discounted reader, making the Nook Simple Touch a solid contender for this holiday. Video of the page turns after the break.