The big gift I received this year was a white Barnes and Noble Nook HD from my sister and her husband. Dad got a gray one so it has been an opportunity to observe a tablet rookie deal with the device. What follows will be a short series of comments and I'll go more into the Nook HD at a later date.
The first thing that struck me was how light and compact it is. Compared to my iView CyPad 760TPC, it is thinner and a touch lighter. The difference in dimensions worked out so that my modified Kindle Fire case by Poetic can hold it, but I recommend getting a case designed for it.
The next thing I noticed was the quality of the display. At 1440 x 900 it has impressive room to render web pages and equals laptops in resoulution. This is actually better than 720p and HD streamed content is amazing on the screen. Even more impressive is the sensitivity of the touch screen -- it is actually easy to pick out the tiny links on a web page.
Sound is much better than I expected. The stereo speakers on the back have good range and are clear even with case covering them. A variety of anime, movies, and YouTube videos have been thrown at it without too many problems.
App selection is tiny in B&N's store and the Nook HD is locked to it exclusively. One of the prominent bundled apps for Hulu Plus has a serious issue of perpetually looping commercials on the first or second commercial break making it useless. Another app notorious for that is Crackle's, but it runs just fine on the Nook HD. Weird.
While I haven't personally run any games on mine, the step nephew and niece have on theirs with total fluidity.
The builtin ebook reader software is excellent and I like it better than the Kindle due to font handling and the fantastic display. Reading is a joy on the device.
It should be noted that the Nook HD is software tailored to be a dedicated book reader with a secondary purpose of displaying movies. It is not aimed at being a general pupose tablet, though that could be changed in the future if B&N so wished. The hardware is certainly capable of it.
My Nook HD is the 8gb model, but can be expanded out to an additional 64gb via a microSD card. The charger and data cord is proprietary, so taking care of it is a must. It does charge amazingly fast from a wall outlet.
The only browsers for the tablet are the modified Ice Cream Sandwich Android browser and Dolphin. The latter can play YouTube videos without issue, which is good because the app is not available for the Nook.
So far I love how responsive the Nook HD is and the display. I do not like the limitations on apps because you can't even side load them! I'll play wth some workarounds next week and report on how that all goes.
Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
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