Barnes and Noble has done something many e-reader brands don’t: it releases limited-edition colors to drive sales. The first one was the NOOK Glowlight 4 Pearl Pink edition, and the second one they released in late 2025, the Ocean Teal. The Teal color looks stunning in person, and the entire back plating is Teal, as are the bezel’s front and sides.
Hardware
The Barnes & Noble Nook Glowlight 4 Ocean Teal features a 6-inch E INK Carta HD display with a resolution of 1072×1404 and 300 PPI. The screen is not flush with the bezel; instead, it has a sunken appearance. A new screen protector has been installed at the factory level to help protect the plastic e-paper display. This was a good move by B&N because it absorbs light rather than reflecting it, unlike glass-based screens.
There is a series of white and amber LED lights that let you adjust the color temperature of the front-lit display. This will be customized with a two-slider bar in the settings menu. The front-lit display can only be tuned to automatically turn on at a specific time of day. It does not have an ambient light sensor; instead, it relies on the time of day. There are physical page-turn buttons on both sides of the screen that curl inwards toward the back. At the bottom of the unit is the Home button, denoted by the N. If you press it, you will return to the home screen. If you hold it for a couple of seconds, the front-lit display will turn on.
Under the hood is an Allwinner B300 quad-core CPU running at 1.5 GHz, 2GB of RAM, and 32GB of internal storage. You can charge the reader with a USB-C cable. It features Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n to connect to the NOOK Bookstore, allowing you to purchase and download ebooks. It is powered by a 1,400 mAh battery, which should be good for three weeks of light reading.
The Nook can sideload your personal collection of digital content. It officially supports EPUB and PDF. You can also buy ebooks from other bookstores in these two formats and load them into Adobe Digital Editions, since both formats support digital rights management (DRM). You can also borrow books from the public library with Overdrive. Barnes and Noble only reserves around half their internal storage for the sideloading of digital content, so you won’t be able to fill up your entire device with your own personal collection.
Software
Barnes and Noble has always run Google Android as its primary operating system, but it runs a heavily skinned version, so many customers would never even know it. One of the benefits of Android is the hacking and rooting community, which tends to unlock the e-reader and add new features, such as the ability to install apps on it. Since this is so new, none exist yet, but there should be a few solutions in the future. This model uses Android 8.1; the previous-generation Nook Glowlight 3 uses Android 4.4.
The main home screen displays the last 3-4 books you have added to your device, purchased, or sideloaded. Beneath that are recommended ebooks from B&N, based on the content in your library. The button navigation includes links to your library, shop, the book you are currently reading, Nook Readouts, and Search.
Let’s talk about the major navigation elements. The library button takes you to the main screen, where all your content is listed. By default, it shows everything you have ever downloaded. This will include ebooks, magazines, newspapers, and PDF files. You can just have it display specific content or establish collections. Collections are important if you have a huge collection. You can make genre-based ones or books by a particular author. When you make a collection, it takes you back to the library screen, where you can tap all the books you want to add to the collection. You can also sort by cover art or list view.
The Store looks really good on the 6-inch screen; nothing is condensed, and it is organized properly. There is an image carousel near the top of the screen that shows cover art for ebooks the Nook editors are showcasing. Beneath that are a bunch of text-based bars that will take you to dedicated sub-sections. This includes New York Times Best Sellers, Nook Bestsellers, Nook editors’ picks, and others like Romance, Erotica, and Autobiographical. When you click on a book to find out more information, there are options to purchase, download a sample, or place a pre-order. By default, it lists book data by publisher and includes a few tabs that show reader reviews, recommended reads based on the book, and book details such as the number of pages.
Barnes and Noble Nook Readouts is a digital news platform where a series of interviews and book reviews is made available every day. There is a section on the platform called Serial Reads, which is basically serialized fiction available to read for free. Every Friday, a few ebooks are given away for free. The Search feature lets you type in an author’s name or book title, and it either loads the book into your library if you own it or displays the store listing.
In the top-right corner of the Nook are an illumination icon, Wi-Fi, and battery life. If you click on it, it will engage in a dropdown menu. Here, you can set up your wireless network and view the remaining battery percentage. There are 2 slider bars for the front-lit display, with white LED lights, and another for the color temperature system, with amber LED lights. You can just use the white ones, the amber ones, or do a blend of the two. E-Readers do not emit blue light from behind the screen like your smartphone or tablet. The lights are positioned along the bezel to project evenly across the screen. The warm light is ideal for reading at night, where you don’t want to disturb your sleeping partner.
The software system overall is polished. Sometimes, when you hit a software-driven key, like the store, it is easy to accidentally hit the library or Nook Readouts. This is because there isn’t much space between the UI elements. I also have fat fingers, so this might contribute to it. Navigating between screens or hitting various settings options loads quickly.
Reading
When it comes to reading ebooks, this device has several preloaded fonts to choose from. They are Mundo Sans, Baskerville, Georgia, Ascender Sans, Malabar, and Joanna Sans. You can also select Publisher Default, which displays the font selected by the publisher, but not all publishers have a recommend font in their metadata. Line Spacing has three options: Single, 1.5, and Double. The margins also have three options: Narrow, Medium, and Wide.Books & Literature
Next to the font adjustment button is a catch-all setting. It lists the table of contents, displays all of the words or paragraphs you have highlighted, views multiple bookmarks, or checkout all of the various words you have looked up in the internal dictionary. If you are reading an ebook and highlight a single word, it will display the word’s definition at the bottom of the screen. There is a button that launches the dictionary and displays a few pages with definitions and examples of its use in sentences.
You can also highlight a word or phrase and add a note, which launches the standard Android QWERTY keyboard, which I think is better laid out than Kobo keyboards. You can also share a word or paragraph via social media.
The Nook Glowlight 4 does a really good job when reading ebooks. Page turns are really fast, and you can hold down on the page turn buttons to rapidly turn pages forward or backward. You can use swipes or taps to turn the pages of an ebook or just hit the manual buttons. The page-turn buttons are on both the right and left sides, which appeals to right- and left-handed users.
There are only two formats the Nook can read: EPUB and PDF. They also read the DRM versions of these files. If you want to sideload your own ebooks, only 5GB is allocated for this type of content; the rest is partitioned for purchases or downloads from the Nook Bookstore. You can shop at other online retailers as long as they sell their content in EPUB, the most popular book format. All you need to do is visit the settings menu and enter your Adobe Digital Editions login and password. If you do not have a login and password, you can visit the website to register. You need to download the free software, then use it to transfer DRM-protected content to your Nook. You can do the same thing with library books from Overdrive.
Barnes and Noble sells manga in EPUB format that looks really good on the six-inch display, taking up almost the entire screen with very few borders. Manga is a huge seller for them in their retail stores. Their digital editions are similar, but they offer a wider selection online, since they are not constrained by the size of the sections in their stores. You will find all the latest bestsellers, as well as lesser-known works. If you like reading manga, there is always something new to discover, or some random, unknown series finally gets the anime treatment, so the books enjoy a resurgence in popularity. The online catalog has basically the entire collection from VIZ, Yen Press, and Kodansha. When reading manga, you will get the same options as reading ebooks, in terms of being able to adjust fonts and line spacing, but there are a few extra options. You can pinch and zoom if some of the text boxes are too small.
NOOK Glowlight 4 Ocean Teal
$149.99
Pros
- Highly Portable & Ergonomic
- Physical Page-Turn Buttons
- Sharp Display & Warm Light
- No Advertisements
- Ocean Teal Is A Great Color
Cons
- Not Waterproof
- Limited Sideloading Space
- Unimpressive Battery Life
- No Bluetooth/Audio
- USA Only
