Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet Review

The Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble has arrived with access to over 2 million books, magazines, comics and more. Add a 7" VividView touch screen, 16 GB of storage and a 11.5 hour battery life, this $249 tablet could be the buy of the holiday shopping season. Kevin Pereira and Candace Bailey take a close look at the Nook for Gadget Pr0n.

What You Need To Know

• The Nook Tablet looks relatively changed from the Nookcolor on the outside.
• There are four physical buttons for power, volume and a home button in the shape of the Nook logo.
• The loop on the corner and the hard edge on the bezel are nice touches.
• The back is rubber, which is great for grip.
• The Nook Tablet weighs virtually the same as the Kindle Fire but is a bit larger and as a result, doesn't feel as dense.
• The device also has 16 GB of storage and a micro SD slot.
• The 7" IPS display was better than the Kindle Fire, which was noticeable when streaming Netflix videos.
• The viewing angles are great and the color did look better with slightly deeper blacks.
• The Nook Tablet has the same processor speed as the Kindle Fire but twice the RAM and storage, which made the experience pretty great.
• The Barnes & Noble UI can feel a little more constrictive than the Amazon one.
• Web browsing felt as fast as it did on the Kindle and the overall layout is similar.
• There is a home screen where you can place all your favorite apps.
• However, it sort of piles the apps on top of each other.
• The focus is reading and there are even shortcuts to get back to whatever you were reading immediately from any screen.
• Access to the store lives at the bottom of the home screen.
• The Barnes & Noble reading library is bigger including periodicals and childrens books.
• You can also lend books to friends and while in the Barnes & Noble store, you can access any book they carry.
• Nook has partnered with Netflix and Hulu Plus to make sure their video content apps are well integrated.
• The nook app store is curated like the Amazon app store but is much more limited.
• The Nook Tablet is supposed to have about 9 hours of battery life for video and while we didn't have it as long as we had the Kindle Fire, we did only have to charge it once.
• The battery levels appeared to drop even slower than the Fire.

Price

• $249

Rating

• 4 Seals of Approval out of 5. (How do we rate gadgets?)
• The Nook is a great tablet with twice the storage capacity and RAM for only $50 more than the Kindle Fire.
• It does suffer a bit frmo the UI and poor app selection but it's an excellent choice.

Want something reviewed on Gadget Pr0n? Email us your suggestions to gadgetpron@g4tv.com.