Barnes & Noble NOOK HD Review

Introduction:

With its rivals getting the head start, Barnes & Noble made sure to deliver some standout points with its latest 7-inch tablet offering in the NOOK HD. Not only does it follow the recipe in making it a convincing offering on paper, such as having a competitive price point right from the onset, but it even manages to go beyond its rivals with the highest resolution display to grace a 7-incher thus far. Considering that the competition is always fierce these days, it’s obviously going to need more than a snazzy display to keep up with the crew.

The package contains:

• Proprietary USB cable
• Wall Charger
• Quick Start Guide

Design:

After seeing a rehashed design with last year’s NOOK TABLET, the NOOK HD is now sporting a totally new design, which is more kid-friendly in our opinion. Yes, it sheds the distinct industrial design of its predecessors, and instead, it’s opting for a more plain looking appearance – albeit, it’s soundly decent with its build quality. To its testament, though, the NOOK HD is relatively easy to hold because it’s one of the lightest (11.11 oz) 7-inch tablets on the market thanks to its sturdy all-plastic body, even beating out its rivals in the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Even better, the soft touch matte surface of its rear casing does a better job of repelling smudges and fingerprints than other comparable tablets. In the end, it’s not flaunting a spectacular design, but rather, it’s unique in the fact that it’s distinguished as a Barnes & Noble tablet.


In keeping it attached to the Barnes & Noble branding, there’s a physical “n” button below its display, which merely gets us back to the homescreen. Indeed awkward to feel out initially, it has at least a decent response when pressed.

Along the left trim of the tablet, we spot its physical power button, which is slightly raised and has a springy feel to it. Likewise, we can say the same thing about the volume control that’s located on the right edge. Meanwhile, the 3.5mm headset jack and microphone are located on the top trim – with the LED charging light, proprietary charging/data port, and an always-useful microSD card slot hidden behind an annoying plastic flap, are all found on the bottom edge.

Flip it over, the only thing visible besides the prominent NOOK logo, is the two speaker grills that line the bottom area of the tablet. Interestingly, the NOOK HD doesn’t pack any sort of camera, both the front and rear, which is one of the compromises they made to keep the tablet affordable.


Display:

Above all, the NOOK HD is still widely regarded as an eReading device first before anything else – with a splash of tablet functionality. Knowing that you’ll be doing a whole lot of reading, they made sure to grace this with something truly impressive. And rightfully so, that’s what we see with its 7-inch 1440 x 900 IPS LCD display, which amounts to a pixel density of 243 ppi. No kidding folks, this is absolutely detailed in every way imaginable, and at the same time, its warm color reproductions gives it that glow to make it pop even more. Adding to the fact that it’s fully laminated, which eliminates air gaps, it offers exceptional clarity with barely any evident glare – plus, it works very well in outdoor conditions too! And we thought the Amazon Kindle Fire HD was polarizing, but this edges it out.

Interface and Functionality:

Looking at it from the beginning, most people would be hard pressed to believe that this is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich underneath it all, but it is! However, as we’re well aware upon turning it on, it’s running a heavily customized interface on top of it, which is updated from last year’s model. Initially, there’s a bit of learning required to navigate around it, however, we really appreciate that it incorporates some of the elements that make us love Android – like how it has multiple homescreens, the ability to change the wallpaper, and a multi-tasking pane to quickly jump between open apps. Even better, it offers support for multiple users so that each account has their specific content and settings.


As a whole, we like it more than the UI of the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, but it’s still not quite as comprehensive and complete as stock Android. Moreover, as it lacks the core Google apps, including the Play Store, it has limited third party apps catalog, which might dissuade some people. On the other end of the spectrum, though, it centers around the Barnes & Noble ecosystem. Therefore, if you’re most interested in reading books, magazines, newspapers, and comics, it’s no doubt going to appease your taste. Although it has a modest multimedia collection, which consists of buying/renting TV shows, movies, and music, it doesn’t seem as connected when compared to what Amazon provides with its services.


On the surface, we’re presented with some basic organizer apps that offer only the bare essential functions. Still, we appreciate that the email app is laid out in a typical two-panel interface so that we’re able to see our inbox while simultaneously reading emails.


Since this is a 7-inch tablet, using the portrait style keyboard is more ideal, seeing that our thumbs are able to encompass its entire layout with minimal stretching. Furthermore, we’re able to maintain a steady rate with few mistakes since it’s very responsive. Unfortunately, you’ll probably want to stay away from using the landscape option because its layout is cramped – and more akin to a smartphone keyboard.



Processor and Memory:

In terms of processing power, the NOOK HD is outfitted with a dual-core 1.3GHz ARM-based TI OMAP 4470 CPU coupled with only 1GB of RAM. Certainly, it doesn’t pack the most horsepower, but it’s effective enough to handle most basic tasks with little fluff. However, we do notice some prominent lag and sluggishness with tasks that are more processor intensive – such as using a graphically intensive live wallpaper.

Well people, there isn’t much of a surprise that the NOOK HD is available in either 8GB and 16GB capacities, but unlike some of its highly-esteemed colleagues, it offers expandability with the aid of a microSD card slot.

Internet and Connectivity:

Showing off its worth in the tablet-like category, the NOOK HD provides us with a very acceptable web browsing experience. Surely, it loads up pages quickly, coughs up proper rendering on the fly, and moves swimmingly with various navigational controls. Frankly, it gets the job done, even more with its super detailed display, but it’s missing out on some functions that would make it a well-rounded offering – like having some sort of sharing functionality integrated with the web browser.


As it stands, the NOOK HD is only available in Wi-Fi only form – with no word on possible cellular connected versions in the future. Even though it features Bluetooth and an 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi radio, it’s lacking other connectivity features such as aGPS and NFC.

Camera:

Without question, there’s a lot of emphasis regarding its beautiful and detailed display, but in gaining the recognition of having the highest-resolution 7-inch tablet, Barnes & Noble had to make a compromise to keep its price within budget. And with that folks, there are no cameras whatsoever on this one – front or back. Therefore, it’s missing out on video-chatting functionality that its closest rivals offer.

Multimedia:

Quickly peeking at the native music player, it’s hardly a head turner with its bleak and cookie cutter presentation value. Regardless of that, its stereo speakers pump out some blistering tones that are backed up by some robust tones.


Loading our test videos, it’s comforting to know that it supports a wide array of video codecs out of the box, and more importantly, it didn’t have any issues with playback. In fact, it maintains a lovely playback performance, but even better, the brilliant looking display merely splashes on some vibrancy to the entire experience.

Battery:

With our normal usage, we’re able to milk out its battery enough to provide us with a solid one day of usage, which is normal in this day and age. Still, we’d fathom it can get more if it packed an ambient light sensor, but instead, there’s only a manual brightness setting.

Conclusion:

Here’s the deal folks. If reading is more of your forte than anything else, there’s no question that the NOOK HD is the ideal tablet for you, especially when it has a healthy and robust ecosystem in that particular category. And with that snazzy looking display, it’s sure to be swell for other things – like watching movies and surfing the web. However, its limited apps selection combined with its heavy skinned interface (while still appreciable experience) lacks the comprehensiveness that the Google Nexus 7 offers with its vanilla Android experience.

Well, it might not be so much of a deal breaker for some people, but you still have to figure in that it’s lacking even a front-facing camera for video chatting, which many of these affordable Android tablets offer. Needless to say, if those aren’t concerns to you, then you’ll make good use out of Barnes & Noble’s latest offering. At $200, there’s no denying there’s still a good amount of value in it, but you’ll seriously need to figure out what features are most pertinent to your needs before making a decision.

Software version of the review unit: 2.0.4

Barnes & Noble NOOK HD Video Review: