Nothing says Merry Christmas like another 7-inch eBook reader cum tablet, and that’s exactly what we’ve got with the Barnes and Noble Nook HD.
Hot on the heels of the likes of the Google Nexus 7, Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and the Apple iPad Mini, can the Nook bring a point of differentiation to the 7-8-inch tablet market?
Available in two colours, Slate (grey) and Snow (white), the Nook HD is the least visually appealing of the mainstream 7-inchers. Nevertheless, according to Barnes and Noble representatives, it’s the most ergonomic.
In many ways, they’re right. Features that make it look visually awkward, such as the wide, raised bezels help the Nook HD when holding. It’s comfortable in one hand with the recessed pillowy backing providing ample grip and at 315g, it’s lighter than its Android rivals, so won’t weigh you down.
There’s a power button to the left and a volume rocker to the right. Up at the top is a 3.5mm headphone jack while down at the base a proprietary charger, with a microSD card slot hidden under a flap. We’re not particularly happy about the Nook HD’s proprietary port, but we're a little bit ecstatic about the microSD card slot, leaving us somewhat neutral overall.
So while not the best looking tablet on the block, we like the Nook HD design, it’s comfortable to hold and light, exactly what an eReader needs to be.
The 7-inch Nook screen is another highlight. Despite offering the same aspect ratio as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD, it’s considerably sharper with its 1440x900 pixel resolution.
This gives it a ppi of 243, which when coupled with the decent viewing angles and colour reproduction makes it the best of the bunch on the screen front.
It’s bright, well saturated and readable outdoors. All these, especially clarity are vital if a device wants to deliver a usable reading experience, so we’re nothing short of impressed by the Nook HD. Easily the best screen out there for £159.
The Nook HD may be an Android tablet of sorts, but you’d be forgiven for not realising this without being told. Barnes and Noble have caged Android, sacrificed Google’s services and overhauled the UI. Not our favourite approach to Android out there, but hum ho.
Fortunately, you can tell a lot of love and care has gone into making the Nook user interface. Delivering all the warmth of a hand sewn quilted blanket and usability rivaling that of the other Android tablets, we’re charmed off the bat.
The UI has an almost candy flossy airiness to it. It’s light, easy to navigate around and everything is very finger friendly, looking almost inflated. It operates on a profile basis, which is something Google have lifted for their latest tablets. This allows you to create either adult or child profiles and control what content is shared across these.
The main homescreen presents you with a horizontal scrolling marquee of your recently used applications. There’s also give you access to ‘your Nook Today’ which charmingly expands to reveal the weather and a few buying recommendations.
There are five sticky shortcuts at the bottom of homescreen to ‘Library’, ‘Apps’, ‘Web’, ‘Email’ and ‘Shop’, and underneath this is a multi-tasking button and a search bar.
Library gives you access to your entire library of magazines, newspapers, books, purchased films and TV content. You can also access apps here and scrapbooks, which are essentially cuttings from magazine articles.
‘Apps’ presents your applications in an extremely easy to press grid of large tiled apps, ‘Web’ opens Barnes and Noble’s customised Android web browser, ‘Email’ acts as the email client and finally, ‘Shop’ is where Barnes and Noble vies for your cash. We’ll come onto this in the multimedia section.
As you can probably guess, this review is going well so far. While we’re normally very adverse to locked down Android, it’s been done well here. When it comes to app selection though, we’re definitely left missing the Google Play Store. The lack of free apps, services such as Dropbox and Google Drive make the Nook HD an eReader first and foremost, and a tablet second.
The keyboard of the Nook HD is comfortable to use given the sizing and the tablet’s form. Our biggest gripe is the keyboard's tab key position - it’s where the shift key should be. This is gotten used to pretty quickly, but every time we went back and forward from our phone to our Nook HD, we inevitably mis-pressed keys as a result.
Thanks to the gorgeous screen, the Nook HD plays movies incredibly well, though they have to be formatted correctly if you’re planning on getting your own content on there. The stereo speakers are loud and rounded, though are rear facing, so benefit from being on a surface in order to distribute sound.
If you’re thinking about shelling out for movies through the Nook Shop, they’re HD and they look great, but boy are they pricey. A new movie rental will set you back £5.74 and a purchase costs no less than £16.09. This compared to the Play Store on the Nexus 7 charging £4.49 to rent a new HD movie or £9.99 to buy it.
The range of content however is better on the Nook, and with the Amazon Kindle Fire being tied to Lovefilm or Amazon Prime, the Nook also delivers newer content.
Spotify and other music apps are available through the Barnes and Noble store and there’s a music player on board for your MP3s. With a 3.5mm headphone jack up at the top, you can plug in your own cans and with Bluetooth connectivity, it connects wirelessly to your A2DP headphones.
Ebooks are handled unsurprisingly well being a focal point of the tablet. Text looks sharp, page layout is customisable and there are plenty of free books and samples in the store to get you in the mood for parting with some money. There’s a theme here in case you haven’t noticed - the Nook HD may be cheap, but running one probably won’t be.
Discovery on the Nook is a pleasure and we were enticed into buying on multiple occasions but we have to be cynical as we’re reviewing the thing (and aren’t made of money).
What really sets the Nook HD apart from both the Google Nexus 7 and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is the expandability. The storage card slot at the bottom means you can comfortably opt for a £159 8GB version and ramp up the memory by an additional 32GB for little over £10.
There’s no 3G version available, so with any Nook HD you’re going to get Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and that’s about it.
The on board web browser runs on Webkit and delivers reliable performance with a hint of marbled grey colouring. It’s been customised to give you the option to view pages in article view and with a Sunspider score of 1233, benchmarks very well indeed.
The Nook HD’s 1.3GHz dual-core processor keeps the UI looking silky. Everything about interacting with it is a pleasure, except for the notifications bar at the top, which lags when expanding it. There are no intensive games or benchmarking tools available in the Nook store, but everything it’s built to do, it does well.
Battery life lasts a comfortable 2 days on the Nook HD with its 4050mAh cell. This translates to about 9 hours of video and 10.5 hours of reading according to Barnes and Noble. Slightly inferior to the Amazon Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 10, but still perfectly usable on a long plane journey or in your bag, with standby time being notably excellent.
If we had someone else’s credit card, we’d absolutely love the Nook HD.
It doesn’t have the best design out there and it uses a proprietary charger, but its a powerful tablet with a gorgeous screen and expandable memory. That you can have profiles and child locked content also makes it a perfect shared device.
At just £159 for 8GB version, it's an alluring buy and rightly so, but buy a Nook HD in the knowledge content on it is costly.
We'd therefore recommend one based on the charm of the UI and hardware. Unless you’re heavily invested in Amazon content, we’d even recommend the Nook HD over the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, making it our choice eReader. If you want a tablet first and foremost though, there’s no way either could stand up to the Google Nexus 7.
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