I take my Nook Color with me enough that I wanted a case for it, but nothing too fancy, seeing as I’d rather spend money on hardware than on accessories.
Most retail stores carry cases for 7-inch tablets and e-readers, but they’re a high-margin item, often selling for $20 and up, which is 25% of what I paid for the device. I looked on Amazon, of course, where I found multiple cases for less than $10, but found conflicting reports as to whether any given case actually fit the Nook Color.
I found what I was looking for at Big Lots, of all places.
Big Lots sells a lot of low-end tablets. Tucked into a corner of the store (not in the electronics aisle, in this case) I found a couple of boxes of “universal” tablet cases. Most of them were too gaudy for me, but I found a basic black one that looks fine. They were priced at $5.
It’s some kind of vinyl with a small amount of padding on the front and back, and the tag says it’s 100% made of synthetic materials. It has four elastic straps to grab the corners and a big elastic strap to hold the case open or closed. It’ll protect the screen if I throw the device into a bag, and would provide adequate protection if it fell off a desk or table. I wouldn’t try a drop onto concrete with this case for protection, but as long as I don’t do anything to the tablet that I wouldn’t do to a laptop, it’ll be fine.
I might be more inclined to pay $25 for a more substantial case to protect a costlier tablet. But I think $5 worth of protection is adequate for a low-end device like mine, and $5 is cheap enough that it seems irresponsible not to give the device that protection, now that I know where to find it.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.