Nook HD+ review

The first time Barnes & Noble showed off the Nook HD+ was way back before Christmas last year. It’s been a long time coming, but this eagerly awaited 9in tablet has finally arrived, and it crams in a huge amount for the money.

It’s another one of those ebook reader/tablet hybrid devices, and it runs a heavily customised version of Android that hooks directly into Barnes & Noble’s own book and video stores. The front-end looks so distinctive that there’s barely a hint that it’s running Ice Cream Sandwich underneath.

This makes the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9in its closest rival; it takes a similar approach, with its own take on Android and a proprietary app store – though, unlike the Kindle Fire, the Nook HD+ permits access to Google Play as well, courtesy of a post-release software update. It’s also substantially cheaper, with prices starting at an astonishing £193 for the 16GB version – and, in many respects, the hardware is just as good.

The Nook HD+ is thicker and more angular to look at than the Amazon device, and we’re not too sure about the loop set into one of the corners: it looks like it should serve a purpose, but, short of hanging it on a giant-sized keyring, we can’t think what. Build quality is beyond reproach, however: the rear panel is constructed from solid, grippy soft-touch black plastic, and the edges and screen surround are hewn from a harder, smoother material that’s slightly darker in colour.

It’s comfortable to hold, even one-handed, and a quick survey of the rest of the edges reveals a welcome touch of practicality. Beneath a flap along the bottom edge is a microSD slot, which allows you to add up to 32GB to the tablet’s 16GB or 32GB of internal storage.

Oddly for a tablet designed for watching video as much as reading books and magazines, there’s no HDMI output, but the display more than makes up for this: it’s a stunner. For starters, the resolution is a better-than-HD 1,920 x 1,280, giving a pixel density of 245ppi, only 20ppi short of the iPad’s Retina display. Quality is beyond reproach, too.

Text in ebooks and magazines is super-sharp – the display renders subtly textured backgrounds with convincing realism – and Full HD movies purchased from the Nook’s video store burst with detail.

Despite the glossy finish, reflections aren’t overly intrusive, which is partly due to the fact that there’s no air gap between the glass front and IPS LCD panel beneath. Brightness is top-notch, too: we measured it at 415cd/m[sup]2[/sup], only just behind the latest generation of iPad.

Hardware-wise, there’s very little to complain about. Even battery life is respectable: it played our low-resolution test video for 9hrs 33mins at half brightness before the battery was exhausted – similar to the latest, fourth generation iPad.

As ever, though, the hardware isn’t the whole story, and this is where the Nook HD+ loses points. It isn’t that we don’t like its customised UI: its bright, light graphics and customisable homescreens are much more pleasant to look at than Amazon’s stark, black equivalent. The ability to maintain up to six separate user accounts is a boon, especially since the adult accounts can be password-protected.

The Article View, which strips out ads and other distracting web page furniture from online articles works superbly, and reading glossy magazines on the Nook’s glorious display is an almost physical experience, complete with curling page animations, and a collection of excellent browsing and page-clipping tools.

Sluggish performance proved our biggest bugbear with the Nook HD+. Compared to other Android tablets we’ve used, and also its arch-rival, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9in, it feels skittish and jumpy. The carousel graphic on the main homepage is stuttery, the store loads slowly and feels horribly sluggish, and the Nook HD+’s web browser doesn’t feel as fluid and responsive as it should, either.

This is frustrating, since the dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor is clearly capable. We recorded decent scores of 1,111ms in SunSpider, and an equally respectable 653 in the more demanding PeaceKeeper benchmark. There were no issues with dropped frames during Full HD video playback, either.

While the book, newspaper and magazine store is well stocked and full of content, we’re not so impressed with the video store, where films and TV shows can be bought or rented, then streamed or downloaded. Its database of films and TV shows is limited, and although in theory you can add films bought through Sony Pictures’ UltraViolet cloud-based movie collection system, we found the one movie in our collection – the animated title, The Pirates! Band of Misfits – came up as “unsupported” and refused to play.

There’s limited content in the Nook app store too – but this no longer matters as the Google Play store now gives you the full selection of Android software. The software update also brings the Google Maps, Gmail and YouTube apps to the Nook HD+, as well as the Chrome browser.

The Nook’s hardware is brilliant, the price is low, and the bookstore is well stocked. Though front-end stutters remain frustrating, the addition of the Google Play store gives it a real edge over Amazon’s Kindle Fire models. It adds up to a hybrid e-reader we can happily recommend.