Hardware 
 
 The Nook Color / Tablet scored plenty of points for originality in the industrial design department, polarizing users in the process. The long, plastic-shelled body did a fine job of standing apart from the push toward all-screen slates that has gripped the vast majority of the industry over the past several years. That's thanks in no small part to a carabiner that wouldn't have looked altogether out of place strapped to your trusty hiking backpack. Devotees of that old design will find some solace in the slimmed-down and souped-up arms of the HD+. The HD, on the other hand, wouldn't seem too out of place hanging out at the open bar of a Simple Touch family reunion, with a stubby body, rounded corners and slightly concave back, created by Robert Brunner, the former Apple designer who breathed life in B&N's popular reader series. 
 
 Function over form is what Barnes & Noble is selling this time out. That's not to say the Nook HD is a particularly bad-looking device, but as with the Simple Touches, there's little doubt that the company sacrificed a bit of sleekness in favor of building a slate around the human hand, a noble enough pursuit so far as tablet industrial design is concerned. As with B&N's other recent products, the Nook HD's got bezel to spare -- a plastic affair that shields the sides of the screen from both dings and thumb prints, making sure those greasy digits don't smudge the pristine HD display at the center of the device. Next to this, you'll find a black display bezel that's wider on the top and bottom of the device. 
 
 The area's a bit of a no man's land along the top -- there's no camera to be seen on the Nook's front or rear. It's a sacrifice the company seemingly made in the name of keeping costs low -- one of the few fronts the company seems willing to admit it got beat by the Kindle Fire HD. While most consumers with money to spend on a new tablet are likely not lacking on the devices-with-cameras front, in late-2012 at least one built-in webcam seems like a pretty baseline feature. That's particularly true for an easy-to-hold, high-def product that might have made a nice little Skype device. On the bottom black bezel, you'll find the Nook's signature lowercase "n" physical home button. It's the one truly conspicuous input on the device, placed there, no doubt, for aesthetic consistency and, B&N tells us, so that you'll never forget which way is up -- not that such orientation makes a heck of a lot of difference when the accelerometer is hard at work. 
 
 A small seam splits the front plastic bezel from another, slightly shinier piece of plastic on the side of tablet. This bit houses the Nook's other buttons. You'll find two volume buttons on the right and power on the left (give the screen a second or so to turn on after clicking the power button). It's not quite as intuitive as having a power button on top, but let's face it; the dream of relatively uniform button placement went out the window years ago. Up top, you've got a headphone jack and small mic hole that allows you to, among other things utilize the company's great Read and Record feature for kids' books. 
 
 On the bottom, there's a proprietary charging jack. When asked why it went that route vs. the nearly ubiquitous micro-USB (the choice on the tablet's e-reader siblings), the company claims that it's, in part, due to the ability to speed up charging. Given how many micro-USB cables we've got floating around, that would have been a nice choice -- and hey, it's good enough for the Fire HD and Nexus 7, right? Barnes & Noble's quick to point out, however, that, unlike the Fire, the price of the Nook includes the necessary (again, proprietary) cable, along with a wall adapter. To the charging port's right, a small yellow light turns green when the battery's full. To the left of this port is a microSD door that'll let you expand the device's 8GB or 16GB by up to 64GB, always a welcome feature on Nook devices, particularly in the case of a tablet, where, unlike e-readers, you'll probably actually be storing some HD multimedia files. It's also a boon for those who found past Nook tablet devices such a delight to root. 
 
 The rear of the device has that familiar soft-touch feel, which really feels nice in-hand, and offers a bit of traction for those sweaty palm you get while using the device on the elliptical machine. As with the Simple Touch devices, the rear indents a bit, providing a slot for your fingers to rest in while reading. However, it's far less pronounced here and honestly doesn't really serve all that much of a purpose. In the center of all of this, as per usual, is a large, indented lower case "n," should you ever forget which tablet you bought when it's faced screen-side down. 
 
 Along the bottom of the rear, two small speaker grids flank a small "nook" logo and all of the requisite FCC information (interestingly, the pricier Nook HD+ only has a single speaker ). (Update: Barnes & Noble contacted us to clarify that the HD+ has two speakers, they're just both behind a single grille.) We prefer the spread-out placement of the stereo speakers on the Fire HD, which make it a bit harder to accidentally muffle the sound while holding the tablet during a movie -- not that the sound on the Nook HD is all that much to write home about, SRS TruMedia or no. It doesn't really get all that loud. For most occasions, we suspect we'll be relying on that headphone jack up top for our multimedia needs. 
 
 On a whole, Barnes & Noble's done a nice job here on the industrial design front, creating a tablet that's easily held, thanks in part to a slim width (7.7 x 5 x 0.43 inches to the Fire's 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.4) and light weight (11.1 ounces to the Fire's 13.9). The 7-inch 1,440 x 900 IPS display really does pop, offering up great viewing angles and the sort of high-definition playback it would have been hard to imagine on a $200 tablet not all that long ago. The Nook also scored a solid 1,271ms score in our SunSpider testing. The plastic bezel on the front provides a nice spot on which to deposit one's thumb and, like the Simple Touch, provides for a design that stands apart from the army of lookalike tablets that dominate the market. 
 
 Software 
 
 The Nook HD is running, hold onto your hats, Ice Cream Sandwich under the hood. Barnes & Noble is far less cagey about Android versions than Amazon. That's perhaps because, while it's a highly skinned version, it's far less so than the one you'll find on the Kindle Fire HD, which essentially secures that tablet's place as a content delivery device. Click the power button and you'll see a lock screen welcoming you back, along with the date and time. In the center is a lock icon surrounded by faces representing different user accounts. Drag yours to the center and you'll open up access to your content. When switching to a different user, you'll get a split second view of the content on the previous user's desktop, a small bug the company will hopefully fix with the next upgrade. 
 
 Barnes & Noble's calling skin "paper-like" (not to be confused, of course, with Paperwhite), a dull name, we'll admit, but it certainly gets to the heart of the matter. The company's gone a way toward providing a minimalist experience, not overcrowding things with flashy features that are unnecessary to core usage. At top is a black toolbar letting you know whose Nook you're looking at. There are notifications in the center that you can tap to read (rather than the customary notification pull-down), the time, WiFi indicator, batter listing and settings icon. Tapping Settings lets you adjust brightness, switch WiFi networks, enable airplane mode and toggle lock screen rotation. 
 
 By default, the desktop is mostly bare, with visible fibers that really drive that whole "paper-like" thing home. At top, you'll see the date, your account icon and another little welcome message custom-fit to the time of day. Below is the Daily shelf, a small carousel featuring quick, rotating access to your most recent content -- movies, newspapers, books, apps, comics, et al. It's not unlike what you get on the Kindle Fire HD, but it's far less central here. Below this is an open area onto which you can drag content and apps. There are five desktop pages in all, so you've got plenty of area to play around with. Toward the bottom of the page are links to your library, apps, the web browser, email and the Nook store. Down farther still are a search bar and a button that gives you quick access to all your open apps. 
 
 Barnes & Noble introduced Your Nook Today for this round of tablets. Clicking this will drop the page down with a cool little animation that breaks the sticker. The first time you launch the feature, the page will take a bit of time to populate -- especially on a lackluster connection. At the top, you'll get the current local weather, along with the current highs and lows, courtesy of AccuWeather.com (a hugely desired feature, according to B&N). The page also features reading recommendations, based on your habits and a quick "Three Minute Read," for the on-the-go person who wants to feel they've accomplished something in an exceedingly short space of time. 
 
 The library page offers up all of your content broken down by category -- books (including comics), magazines, movies and TV, apps, kids (including all content from all mediums that fit in the category), catalogs, newspapers and various methods for refining your own content, live shelves, scrapbooks and files. Content in the different categories is organized into rows that can be advanced with a swipe. Clicking on the header will bring you to a page that features all of that content laid out on grid. As with the homepage, the layout features a lot of white space -- a defining characteristic of the UI, which, compared to the vanilla Jellybean offered up on the Nexus 7, feels a little half-baked. Though for those looking for a simple tablet that doesn't overwhelm the senses, there's perhaps something to be said for Barnes & Noble's approach here. The aesthetic carries over to the Apps page. The icons certainly pop when placed on the dull white background, surrounded by so much white space. 
 
 Browser 
 
 Barnes & Noble's offered up a fairly straightforward browsing experience this time out -- precisely what one would look for in a starter tablet like this. At the top, you've got tabs which can be added to with the click of a plus sign. Below this, you'll find the navigation bar and buttons, and a bookmarks icon that will bring you to a list of browser thumbnails on a plain background. Along the bottom are icons for sharing (via email and Evernote), searching and the ArticleView, which adheres to the device's central reading focus by serving up web stories in a more magazine-like format. Clicking the top right lets you add a bookmark to the page you're currently reading and brings up access to further reading settings. 
 
 Reading 
 
 Reading is still the essence of the Nook line, and in a sense, like the Nook Color before it, the HD can be regarded as a reading device with some extra tricks up its sleeves. After all, the company clearly designed the form factor around the reading experience. Accordingly, in press materials for the company, reading is regularly mentioned ahead of things like movies and apps, in spite of the push toward a higher-definition display. Not much has changed on the prose-reading front. You get a page largely monopolized by text, save for the book title on the top and your progress on the bottom. Page turns default to a standard swipe, though fiddling with the settings make it possible to add a more book-like page curl animation that features some intentional image bleed from the page before it. 
 
 Click the progress at the bottom and you get a slider that lets you flip through the book. You can also get information on the book (cover, reviews, recommendations), word and phrase search, sharing and format adjustments -- which offer up eight text sizes, six font styles and six page colors, among others. 
 
 More visual texts are where the Nook HD really shines. Magazines like Details really do look stunning on the HD display. And while the Nook HD+ offers up a better form factor for such reading, you can home in on text with a pinch. For a more straightforward reading experience, Barnes & Noble is offering up the same ArticleView you get in the browser. Click it and the images disappear, offering up a layout similar to the printer-friendly format offered up by many news sites. 
 
 Tap the bottom of the screen, and you get a carousel of article pages. Below that is a link to a grid layout that offers up the whole book laid out as thumbnails on a single page. You can also view the contents via a more traditional TOC. The whole experience is tied together with excellent transition animations, making for a smooth and seamless reading experience. For all the unfinished feeling one gets navigating through the UI, it's clear that B&N invested a lot in magazine reading this time out. 
 
 Comics, too, are a pleasure to read on the Nook HD. The colors really pop and enabling ZoomView Letterboxing makes it possible to read panel by panel, really the ideal way to enjoy sequential art on a tablet device. As with magazines, you can also view a carousel of pages on the bottom of the screen, along with textual and visual tables of contents. 
 
 Barnes & Noble added shopping catalogs to its list of reading options. The viewing options are quite similar to those of magazines, only these get pushed to you for free, because, well, their sole reason for existing is to sell you products. The images feature hotspots, which, when clicked, bring you to product pages where you can purchase products. They look great, sure, but in a world in which catalogs are still widely considered junk mail for most consumers, it's hard to imagine the feature serving as a major selling point for most users. 
 
 Kids' books, meanwhile, have long been something of a secret weapon in Barnes & Noble's tablet offerings. The company has worked closely with manufacturers to offer up an experience that really goes the extra mile to harness the multimedia capabilities of the devices, adding sound effects, animation and music. Opening up the book offers up three different experiences: Read By Myself, which offers up no narration, Read and Play, which features built-in narration and Read and Record, which lets parents record narration for their kids. 
 
 As with other texts, clicking the bottom of the screen offers up a carousel of pages from the book. All of this, coupled with the low price, relatively durable design, small form factor and user profiles make a compelling argument for the Nook HD as a strong device for families. The whole process is extremely simple, and once a profile has been created, it will be synced over to other Nook devices linked to the same account. 
 
 Profiles 
 
 As evidenced by the lock screen, Barnes & Noble is really pushing the profile feature this time out -- and it's not hard to see why. Families share tablets, particular inexpensive ones. But while you might not mind handing off a $200 tablet, you don't necessarily want to put all of your content into your kids' hands. You can set up to six profiles per device by clicking your user icon on the home screen. From here, it will give you the option to create a profile for an adult or child. You can change the profile image using built-in clip-art or pictures stored on the device and pick a gender (you can also opt for a non-gender-specific version). Filling in the age on the child account helps Barnes & Noble determine "age-appropriate content." 
 
 On the following page is a checklist for different content types you can let the children access, as well as rating levels for movies and TV shows. Once you've filled all this out and picked a few interests, the Nook will recommend free content to you. 
 
 Shop 
 
 The Nook Shop design is fairly straightforward, offering up a rotating carousel of featured content in the upper left, with a list of pages of different content (book, magazines, movies & TV, et al) to its right. Below this are further recommendations broken up by categories like "Passion for Fashion" and "Your Favorite Heroes" (comics). If you know what you're searching for, however, just skip straight down to the search field at the bottom of the page. 
 
 It should be pointed out that, like the Fire, the Nook's skinned UI means you're getting no access to the Google Play store. The company is instead opting to work with developers to create apps that better fit their device. And while B&N claims to have all the popular apps, there are some conspicuous absences here -- searching for Spotify, for example, will only offer up a copy of the $12 e-book, "Spotify for Dummies." Who knew such a thing existed -- and really, without access to the app, who would ever need such a thing? 
 
 Wrap-up 
 
 Barnes & Noble invested a lot in the hardware, and it shows. The Nook HD has a great little screen, snappy performance and industrial design that stands out from the competition without proving quite as polarizing as its predecessor. Most of all, it's built to be held, a fact that echoes the device's focus on the reading experience. That core functionality spills over onto the software side, making visually interesting magazines, comics and kids' books a pleasure to read. Priced (ad-free) at $199 for an 8GB model and $229 for 16GB, it's a great little piece of hardware for those looking for a reader that can also handle casual gaming and high-def videos. And the addition of profiles makes this a tempting proposition for families with children. 
 
 The "paper-like" UI, on the other hand, doesn't feel as if it got quite as much attention. It's stark and at times buggy (though the company promises that a fix is coming shortly), missing both the content focus of the Kindle Fire and the full functionality (and Google Play access) of the Jelly Bean-rocking Nexus 7. Also, the lack of a camera feels like a strange oversight. All said, however, the Nook HD is a fine little tablet for the price, though in a space where the Kindle and Nexus have been crowned champions, asking people to make the leap feels like a bit of a hard sell. ||||| The new Nook doesn't have the most features, but it's got a good screen in a featherweight package -- and no ads. 
 
 Barnes & Noble 
 
 Barnes & Noble‘s new Nook HD, which arrives in the retailer’s stores this Thursday, competes with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD about as directly as it’s possible for one product to rival another. 
 
 They’re both $199 tablets with 7″ screens. They both use customized versions of Android to provide experiences that emphasize the consumption of content — books, magazines, video, apps and more — that you’ve purchased from the company that sold you the tablet. It’s the same basic idea from two different bookselling behemoths. 
 
 And yet, for all their similarities, the two tablets aren’t carbon copies. Even if a company decides to forsake most or all of its profit in hopes of making it up on later content sales, it’s impossible to sell a decent $199 tablet without making certain tradeoffs. And some of the decisions Barnes & Noble made are substantially different than Amazon’s. 
 
 For instance: 
 
 The Nook HD has a higher-resolution screen. It’s got 1440-by-900 pixels, a meaningful increase over the Kindle Fire HD’s 1280-by-800. 
 
 It’s narrower and lighter. The Nook HD’s curvy case (available in white and gray versions) is 5″ wide vs. the Fire HD’s 5.4″, a difference that sounds insignificant but makes for a more single-hand-friendly design. And at 11.1 oz., it’s enough lighter than the 13.9-oz. Fire HD that you notice the difference as you hold it up to read. 
 
 It doesn’t have a camera. Skype video calls via the front-facing camera are a major selling point for the Kindle Fire HD, but Barnes & Noble says that it doesn’t think most consumers care all that much about video calling. 
 
 The $199 model has 8GB of memory rather than the Fire HD’s 16GB. The skimpier capacity won’t matter if you’re just downloading books, but might be tight if you’re storing video and other memory-hungry content. But the Nook HD, unlike the Fire HD, has a MicroSD slot, letting you add more capacity by plugging in a card. (A 32GB MicroSD will run you around $20.) Or you can spring for the 16GB Nook HD, which is $229. 
 
 If you’re doing your price-comparison math down to the last nickel, take note that the Nook HD comes with an AC adapter; with the Fire HD, that’ll cost you an extra 10 bucks. 
 
 A bigger difference between the two tablets: The Nook HD’s low price isn’t subsidized with the ads and other in-your-face marketing Amazon uses to help cover its costs. With the Nook HD, there’s no equivalent of the Fire HD’s “special offers” screensaver — which you can remove for $15 — and the Barnes & Noble shopping experience is all concentrated in one section you can explore or ignore, rather than distributed throughout the interface as it is on the Fire HD. Overall, the interface has a more low-key, customizable, less hypercommercial feel. 
 
 The Kindle Fire HD has a feature called FreeTime, enabled in a recent software update, which lets parents create custom profiles for one or more kids, limiting the content they see to appropriate materials and setting maximum amounts of usage per day. The Nook HD’s Nook Profiles feature is roughly comparable; it doesn’t have the usage-limit option, but does let up to six family members of any age share the tablet, with everyone getting their own personalized content library. 
 
 Overall, though, the Fire HD has more features, including X-Ray, which annotates books and movies with information on their creators, characters and more, and Immersive Reading, which lets you read a Kindle e-book while listening to the Audible audiobook version. Barnes & Noble also doesn’t have a counterpart for Amazon’s $79/year Prime membership, which lets you stream a growing library of video and borrow books at no extra charge. 
 
 With 3 million e-books (including picture books for kids), almost 500 magazines and 44 newspapers, Barnes & Noble was already in solid shape when it came to reading materials. But while Amazon has been building its collection of movies and TV shows for years; Barnes & Noble is a newcomer to selling and renting video, having relied on Netflix and Hulu in its previous color tablets. It says it’s signed up Disney, Fox, HBO, Sony, Starz, Viacom, Universal, Warner and other providers for its fledgling video service, and will have thousands of offerings by the time the first consumers get their Nook HDs on Thursday, and “a broad collection” by the holidays. 
 
 When I tried the service prior to public release, there wasn’t much there yet: My search for “Paul Newman” only retrieved one movie, for example. But the video I checked out was noticeably crisper than the same stuff on the Kindle Fire HD, presumably because of the higher-resolution display. 
 
 As for music — well, Barnes & Noble isn’t getting into that business itself, so it has no direct equivalent of Amazon’s well-stocked music store. Its app store does have some relevant offerings, including Rhapsody and TuneIn. 
 
 Speaking of apps, the Nook HD has access to 10,000 of them, including many Android notables, from Angry Birds to Flipboard. That should be enough to keep anyone productive and entertained, but it’s only around a third of what Amazon says it has in its Appstore. And it’s an even dinkier drop in the bucket compared to what you’ll get on a tablet which has unfettered access to Google’s Google Play Store. If having access to the most apps is important to you, the $199 tablet you want is Google’s own Nexus 7. 
 
 One last point in the Nook HD’s favor: The review unit I had ran nearly-final software that seemed to be in good shape. That was a refreshing change from the Kindle Fire HD in its initial, profoundly buggy form. (The recent software update from Amazon has made that tablet much more usable.) 
 
 The Nook HD certainly doesn’t trump Amazon and Google’s competitors, let alone the iPad Mini. (Here’s Jared Newman’s feature comparison of all four tablets.) And if you plan to watch much video, I’d confirm that Barnes &Noble’s movie and TV show selection is as impressive as the company claims before opting for the Nook HD over the Kindle Fire HD. But with its featherweight form factor, sharp screen and pleasant user interface, the Nook HD — which is being joined by a 9″ big brother, the $269 Nook HD+ — keeps Barnes & Noble in the cheap-tablet game it helped create with its original Nook Color. Anyone who’s got $199 to spend on a tablet should give this Nook a look. ||||| Barnes and Noble Nook HD Review 
 
 The 7-inch HD tablet market is bursting at the seams, but for most users, the buying decision comes down to which ecosystem you prefer. I’ve looked at virtually all the major devices and find most admirable-to-excellent. The Barnes & Noble Nook HD sits in the upper-range of that spectrum. 
 
 The book seller followed competitor Amazon into the e-reader market, but has quickly gotten up to speed on design and technology. Soon after Amazon unveiled its all HD lineup of tablets (the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch and Kindle Fire HD+ 8.9-inch), Barnes & Noble followed with its own line of redesigned HD tablets. I spent a weekend with the 7-inch tablet. 
 
 By Design 
 
 Barnes & Noble has come a long way since its first e-ink e-reader, which is almost the exact same size as the new 7-inch device. The newer and far more powerful LCD-based tablet is, at 11.1 ounces, actually lighter than the old e-reader. 
 
 At 7.7-inches x 5-inches x .43-inches the Nook HD is slightly wider than the Google Nexus 7 and considerably narrower that the Amazon Kindle Fire It’s also lighter than both competing devices. I have large hands and can comfortably hold any of these tablets in one hand. My wife, however, found the Kindle Fire HD unwieldy and the Nook HD just right. To be fair, the Kindle Fire HD devotes some of that extra space to a camera (the Nexus 7 has one, too). Barnes & Noble chose to leave out the camera since taking photos and videos was not among the top four activities people conduct with their tablets. In my testing, I never missed the camera. 
 
 The rest of the body is about as clean and workable as competitive devices, though I do prefer the Nook HD’s more visible power and volume buttons to the Kindle Fire HD’s completely flush ones (always have trouble finding those). Plus, the Nook has a physical home button (like the iPad’s), a feature I wish every tablet had. The soft-touch back is where you’ll find the speakers, there’s also a micro-SD card slot along the bottom edge for storage expansion and an audio jack along the top edge. One funny side note: While Apple is busy trying to rid the world of 30-pin interfaces, Barnes & Noble is giving them fresh support in the Nook HD. 
 
 Under the hood, the Nook HD is an admirably powerful 7-inch tablet, with a 1.3 GHz dual-core processor, a full GB of RAM and, at 1440 x900, a higher resolution screen than either the Kindle Fire HD or the Nexus 7, both of which feature 1280x800 resolution screens. Like many other manufacturers, Barnes & Noble laminates the screen, a process which removes air-gaps from between the LCD panel, touch technology and glass to reduce overall screen reflection. I did find the screen quality impressive. 720p videos, books, comic books, magazines and the new catalog content looked excellent, and every bit of text was crisp at even the smallest size. On the other hand, I have been similarly impressed with the image quality on the Nexus 7 and Fire HD. 
 
 One area where the Kindle Fire HD does have the Nook HD beat is in sound quality. Amazon stuffed a couple of Dolby speakers into the Fire HD chassis and they can delivery loud and sharp sound quality. The Nook HD has stereo SRS TruMedia Speakers that simply paled in comparison. If you plan on watching a movie or listening to music on the Nook HD, get out your ear buds (no, the device does not ship with a pair). Update: Barnes & Noble has promised an over-the-air (OTA) update that should address audio issues in Nook Video content. 
 
 The Best Face 
 
 Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD features my favorite interface of all the 7-inch tablets I’ve tested. Built on top of a thoroughly hidden Android 4.0, the user-centric interface is a complete do-over from the Nook Tablet and it’s completely effective and intuitive. 
 
 User profiles sit at the center of this redesign. When you hit the “N” or home button, all the user profiles are there. You simply drag your face to the lock and you’re inside your profile. All the content, email account settings browser bookmarks, parental controls (or lack of them) are keyed to each individual profile. The Nook HD tablet I tested came preloaded with three profiles: one for a man, one for a woman and one for a child. However, I found it easy to add additional ones: A tap on the welcome message at the top of the screen displays all the user profiles associated with the device and the option to create more. I added two more in a matter of moments. 
 
 Barnes & Noble chose to add profiles because their research showed that users regularly pass along the tablet to multiple family members and the benefit is obvious. If you enable your child’s profile and then hand the device to them, they only have access to their books, movies and may be blocked from, say, shopping and browsing the web. While I like the profile controls, you'll want to remember to enable password protection on your adult profiles. Without it, your child can easily switch between profiles and all of the content on the device and available online. 
 
 Each profile opens to a simple and intuitive home screen that offers a carousel (the latest interface metaphor craze) of recently viewed items (books, movies, games, apps, newspapers, magazines). Below that are links to your library of local content, apps, the Web browser, email and shopping. At the very top of the page is a welcome and a “your Nook Today” button. Tap it and you’ll see your local weather (brought to you by Accuweather), as well as books and magazine sections based on your interests and previous selections. 
 
 Both the e-mail and web browser interface are brand new and, like everything else on the Nook HD, they’re the picture of clarity. Amazon Kindle Fire HD’s email interface is plenty clear, too, but Barnes & Noble made a very smart choice with its key apps: it gave Mail, Web, Apps, Shop and your Library a permanent, fixed place on the homepage. It’s true, you can find Shop, Apps and the Web in a scrollable text menu at the top of the Kindle Fire HD interface, but it’s not a prominent and also not entirely fixed. Overall, the Nook HD interface is simpler and better than what you’ll find on the Kindle Fire HD. 
 
 Content 
 
 Where Amazon still outstrips the Nook is a comprehensive shopping and multimedia experience. Music is, at best, an afterthought on the Nook HD. There’s a Rhapsody App on the device, but I don’t need another music service. Amazon has its own MP3 library and also adds cloud services that make it easy to add your own tracks to the cloud and, by extension, the Fire HD tablet. 
 
 The Nook HD has almost pulled even in the video space, with a new, well stocked Nook Video service (under Shop) that features movies and TV shows you can rent and buy. Amazon offers the $75 a year Prime option which adds unlimited free streaming for movies in the Prime Library. 
 
 As a reading device, magazine and books look equally good on the Fire HD and Nook HD, but you’ll be happier holding the much lighter Nook HD for longer. Both make magazine content look amazing. You can switch between the standard magazine view, unadorned article view, and a bird’s eye view of dozens of pages with either device. The art of reading magazines on 7-inch devices has been all but perfected, and the choice in this area may come down to selection, though I noticed no major differences in reading options. 
 
 The App selection is as rich as you’ll find on any other Android device, but with an extra layer of security—Barnes & Noble curates its entire App library. 
 
 Going Shopping 
 
 As I write this, Google is unveiling a new Nexus 7 that is reportedly lighter and more powerful than the previous model. It includes 16 GB of storage and costs just $200. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is also $199 for a $16 GB model, but it includes sleep-state ads (which bother some, but not me) and does not include an AC adapter (which you can buy separately for $19.99). The Barnes & Noble HD 7-inch is ad free and does include an AC adapter. The 8 GB model is $199. You’ll pay $229 for the 16 GB model. All of these devices are Wi-Fi only. 
 
 To put all this in perspective, the new mid-sized tablet in town, the Apple iPad mini costs $329 for the base, 16 GB model. For that reason alone I see it has a somewhat separate device and one that those seeking a sub $250 device may not consider. For those shopping in that range, however, the Barnes & Noble Nook is an instant winner. It’s feature rich, fast, fluid, has an excellent interface and is well worth $200. It’s the obvious choice for previous Nook owners and deserves serious consideration for those in the other e-reader and mid-sized tablet camps who may be considering jumping ship. ||||| Editors' note, November 25, 2013: Due to increasingly stronger competition in the tablet space, CNET has lowered the score of the Nook HD. 
 
 The Nook HD is light, comfortable, and has the sharpest screen of any current 7-inch tablet. With full access to the Google Play store, "limited app availability" can now be crossed off as its major caveat. 
 
 The Nook HD's higher resolution screen makes movies and games look sharper than on any other small tablet. The OS still feels like a walled garden, but with access to now tons of apps and media content, that doesn't matter as much as it did when the tablet first launched. 
 
 While the Nexus 7 is still the best small tablet, the Nook HD's low price (especially now), sharp screen, expandable memory, and great app selection significantly increases its appeal. 
 
 Starting at only $129, the Nook HD is one of the best small tablets you can buy. 
 
 Design 
 
 I spent days comparing the Nook HD to the top 7-inch tablets available and if there’s anything I’ve learned in that time it’s this: the devil’s in the details. From a cursory glance, the average consumer might have a difficult time distinguishing one black, gray, or white slate from the next, but it’s the little things that set them apart. Stuff like weight, corner design, bezel width, and texture are small things that play a big part in comfort and feel. 
 
 The Nook HD comes in both smoke (medium gray) and snow (kind of like ivory) and has a soft, rubberized back with a volume rocker on the top-right edge and a power/sleep button opposite it on the left. On the bottom edge are a custom 30-pin charging connector and a microSD card slot covered with a door. The tablet includes a 30-pin to USB cable that plugs into the included AC adapter. Dual speakers sit on the lower back and the top edge of the tablet seat a headphone jack and microphone. 
 
 The home button and the home screen. These are your options. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 In middle of the bottom border, right above the bezel, is the hardware home button, last seen on the Nook Tablet. Like on the iPad, the home button is a great “just press this if things get confusing” solution for the ever-evolving tablet interface. Unfortunately, there’s no built-in camera, no ambient light sensor, no Micro-USB, and no HDMI port. 
 
 The Nook HD’s corners are smoothly rounded and at only 0.69 pound, it’s the lightest 7-inch tablet available and feels perfectly comfortable when held. The device is as thick (depth-wise) as the Nexus 7 and a bit thicker than the Fire HD and though it’s wider than the Nexus 7, it’s noticeably narrower than the almost-too-wide Fire HD. Held vertically, the side bezel's width just about matches the Nexus 7; however you get a little extra space due to the black borders surrounding the Nook’s screen. 
 
 Barnes & Noble Nook HD Amazon Kindle Fire HD Google Nexus 7 Apple iPad Mini Weight in pounds 0.68 0.86 0.74 0.68 Width in inches (landscape) 7.65 7.7 7.8 7.87 Height in inches 5 5.4 4.7 5.3 Depth in inches 0.43 0.4 0.4 0.28 Side bezel width in inches (landscape) .3/.5 0.9 0.8 0.8 
 
 Even with its light weight, the Nook HD’s build feels solid and durable; however, it proves susceptible to screen warping with enough pressure in the right place. Applying pressure to the back or along the right bezel yields a visible screen warping effect on the tablet’ screen. Now, screen warping occurs to some extent on nearly every tablet; however, if you’re just holding the Nook HD while reading a book or watching a movie, you’ll likely have no cause to apply enough pressure to your Nook HD for this to be a problem. 
 
 The interface 
 
 The Nook HD's operating system uses Ice Cream Sandwich as its base, with a custom-designed skin that feels like an evolution of the original Nook Tablet's OS. The home screen sports a light gray, slightly textured aesthetic that permeates through all native apps and menus. The home screen shows Library, Apps, Web, Email, and Shop options near the bottom with a global search bar underneath. Directly above is a space to organize your content shortcut icons, and near the top of the screen sits your content carousel. 
 
 Once in your library, you'll have access to every piece of content available to you. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 In the top-right edge of the screen is Your Nook Today, which shows the current weather as well as book and movie recommendations based on recent additions to your library. Also, if the opt-out-of-ads kerfuffle for the Fire HD turned you off, you'll be pleased to know that Barnes & Noble has no such ads on its tablets. 
 
 Settings can be accessed by tapping the gear at the very top right of the screen and includes options too many to name. If you've ever used a tablet before however, there’s nothing included in the settings that will surprise you. The default software keyboard, thankfully, includes a tab, but typing didn’t feel as as accurate as it does on the Nexus 7. 
 
 Nook profiles allow multiple users to use a single tablet, while keeping each person's content their own. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 Nook Profiles can be accessed from the upper left-hand corner and allows users to set up multiple profiles on a single tablet. With a simple tap of the profile photo at the top of the screen, you can choose to switch to a new profile almost instantly. Once in the new profile, that user’s content (and only that user’s content) will be displayed and accessible. Lock-screen switching is also possible. Both adult and child profiles can be accessed and passwords can be added to adult profiles, ensuring that not just anyone can access your content. Nook profiles are simple to implement and feel secure and useful, likely appealing to families on a budget. 
 
 Overall, the interface is much cleaner and intuitive than the Nook Tablet’s; however, I still have a few problems with navigation. As much as I like the Home button, I feel the interface relies on it a bit too much. If looking at a magazine for example, there’s no built-in navigation to view all magazines and you’re forced to use the home button and then navigate to another piece of content if you want to switch. Not a huge deal, but it's annoying in the moment. 
 
 Now PLAYing: Google! 
 
 As of version 2.1.0 of the Nook OS, both the Nook HD and Nook HD+ include full Google Play support. All apps, music, videos, books, and magazines available on Google Play can now be downloaded directly to the Nook HD tablets. The Nook Store and its content is still available. 
 
 Google Play. Now that's more like it! (Credit: Screenshot by Eric Franklin) 
 
 The chief criticism of the Nook HD tablets when they launched was the severely limited apps and media content ecosystem. With the additional of Google Play however, this effectively becomes an non-issue. Google Play is second only to iOS in terms of available content. 
 
 Chrome is now the default Web browser and all (aside from Google now) Google service apps -- Gmail, Magazines, and Books, etc. -- are automatically downloaded to the tablet once the update is installed. 
 
 Among the most popular 7-inch tablets, the Nook HD is the only device that includes a microSD card for storage expansion. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 Hey, I hear the Nook HD does pretty well with books. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 If you have an Ultraviolet account, any movies added to your digital UltraViolet library will show up in your Nook HD+ library as well. A Netflix app is also available, but there are no plans to bring HBO Go just yet. The tablet supports MP4, 3GP, WEBM, and AVI video files, and MKV files. 
 
 Thanks to its high-resolution screen, text in books is crisp and clean whether in Google Books or the Nook’s own book app. On the Kindle Fire HD, reading options like X-Ray, the percentage-read counter, and immersion reading may give Amazon's tablet the slight edge here. For a pure reading experience on a large tablet, though, the Nook HD+ the best current solution thanks to its lightweight and comfortable build. 
 
 Like pure Android tablets, the Nook HD does not have access to the Amazon Instant Video app. Right now, the app is only available on Kindle Fire tablets and iOS devices. Something to consider if, like myself, you're an Amazon Prime member with a heavy Amazon video streaming habit. 
 
 The Nook’s magazine app is still the preferred way to view your favorite periodicals. I includes a smooth page-turning effect and the option to easily cut any page and include it in a virtual scrapbook. So, depending on your magazine(s) of choice, you could easily make a workout or recipes scrapbook, which is a lot less cumbersome than taking screenshots. Unfortunately, your clippings are only stored locally and (probably thanks to copyright laws) there's no way to share them online. You can, however, share them with other profiles on your Nook HD+. 
 
 Catalog support? Check! Oh, you didn't know that was a thing? Well, it is. (Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
 
 Catalog support is not something I ever thought I'd begin a sentence with in a tablet review, but here we are and the Nook HD+ has it. Catalogs can be downloaded through the Nook store and function much in the same way that magazines do. However, certain items (predetermined by the catalog's publisher) will have a distinct visual cue next to them called a hot spot. Tapping on the hot spot takes you to a page with more information about that particular item at which point you can add it to your scrapbook and be seamlessly directed to the company's Web page for that item. If thumbing through catalogs is your thing, it makes for a fairly convenient and entertaining way to shop. 
 
 Hardware features 
 
 The Nook HD houses a 1.3GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 CPU with a PowerVR SGX544 GPU bringing up the rear. It comes in both 8GB and 16GB varieties and its microSD card slot supports up to 64GB cards. The tablet includes 1GB of RAM, has 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support, and Bluetooth 4.0. There’s no gyroscope, compass, or GPS inside the tablet. There is however an accelerometer.
– Barnes & Noble's Nook HD is by no means a world-changer, but most reviewers think those in the market for a modestly priced e-reader would be well advised to give the $199 device a close look. Dig into the source links for more details, but here are some bottom lines: Lance Ulanoff, Mashable: "It’s feature rich, fast, fluid, has an excellent interface, and is well worth $200. It’s the obvious choice for previous Nook owners and deserves serious consideration for those in the other e-reader and mid-sized tablet camps who may be considering jumping ship." Eric Franklin, CNET: It "can’t match competing tablets in media library breadth, but as long as you're not looking for bells and whistles, its sharp screen and comfortable body make it an ideal tablet choice for reading books and magazines. " Harry McCracken, Time: "With its featherweight form factor, sharp screen, and pleasant user interface, the Nook HD ... keeps Barnes & Noble in the cheap-tablet game it helped create with its original Nook Color. Anyone who’s got $199 to spend on a tablet should give this Nook a look." Brian Heater, Engadget: It's got a "great little screen" and "snappy performance," making it a "fine little tablet for the price." But "in a space where the Kindle and Nexus have been crowned champions, asking people to make the leap feels like a bit of a hard sell."