Rockin’ out with B&N

You almost can’t go wrong having Sue Sylvester (Glee’s Jane Lynch) and a gang of scrub faced kids engaged in spirited choreography in a book store. The commercial portends to some of the fancy goings on inside Barnes and Noble’s new Nook Tablet.

LOOK AND FEEL

The Nook Tablet looks almost Identical to the Nook Color which came out last year, but it’s a bit lighter (4.6 oz.). The gun-metal beveled edges make it feel a little lighter than the Kindle Fire, and the case has a sturdy feel. A 7″ tablet is the perfect size between phone and laptop, where 10″ tablets just seem over-sized now. No one seems to know what the loop on the left bottom is for (hooking to a belt, hanging up?). I supposed the open corner allows easier access to the SD slot.

Immediately upon turning on the Nook Tablet one gets a nice, full-screen welcome video with an attractive spokes-model who personalizes the experience for you and guides you through some of the basic operations of the device. It’s a nice touch and a great move for settling the fears of a new tablet owner.

There’s a power button on the top left, and volume up and down buttons on the top right.

One must use the supplied Nook charger cable. Even though it looks like a regular mini USB plug, the B&N plug is slightly different. Also, it takes almost 12 hours to get a full charge.

Like the Nook Color, there’s a home button on the front face at the bottom that takes  you to your home page, or pulls up the bottom menu to choose from. The bottom menu conveniently allows you to go home, to the library, applications, to the web, or settings menu — the most-used functions.

The screen is bright, and responsive to the touch, and like most portable devices, the home screen is easily editable so you can add your favorites for quick navigation.

STORE AND APPLICATIONS

The Barnes & Noble store doesn’t have nearly the selection of the Amazon or Android store, but there’s enough to satisfy with games, social networking, and  productivity apps (calendar, notepad, alarms) etc. It’s better organized than the Amazon or iTunes stores, but the prices are not as good.

The store offers books, magazines, periodicals, movies and more,  but some might not feel as comfortable without Amazon’s familiar shopping interface.

USABILITY

The Nook Tablet screen seems to be slightly more responsive than the Kindle. Typing is never easy on a tablet, and the horizontal mode is slightly too big for thumb typing and too narrow vertically for ten-finger typing. The horseshoe shaped home button seems to add an additional complexity to the flow as it adds an extra step which could’ve been handled on-screen (like the Kindle).

On the home screen your favorites don’t seem to ‘snap’ to the grid and that’s probably a setting that’s easily adjusted, but it’s become so ubiquitous on phones and other tablets, you want it to react the same way.

READING

Reading books is a straightforward affair and the pages turn quickly (albeit without the familiar Kindle page-turn animation).  I had a little trouble navigating the menu and had to go back to the user’s guide to determine how to add a bookmark (tap top right corner).

The magazines in particular show beautiful resolution pictures (National Geographic’s top-notch photography was a good example)  and it’s less choppy than the Kindle’s magazine interface. Book reading is similar to the Kindle, though it might take a little while to get used to the nuanced differences in navigation.

MOVIES AND TV

Movies from Netflix or TV shows from Hulu stream seamlessly with a good WiFi connection, and for personal viewing with good headphones, it’s a treat. Long car rides (as a passenger of course), airport terminals, work commutes are perfect for quickly firing up downloaded episodes and catching up on streaming documentaries.

BROWSER

I found the Nook browser to be just as responsive as the Kindle.

Though Amazon boasts about its Silk browser with its caching capabilities, I didn’t notice any difference.  It remains to be seen if the Silk browser experiences a boost in speed after culling information from all the new Silk users.

STORAGE

Unlike the Kindle, the Nook Tablet comes with an external SD storage (expandable to 32Gb) for additional content.

Here’s the kicker. Natively, the Nook has 13Gb of storage, but 12Gb of it is RESERVED (!) for B&N-only content. You only get 1Gb to store your own images, audio, movies and unlike Amazon, there’s no cloud storage.

CONCLUSION

No one will confuse the Barnes’ and Noble ($249) Nook Tablet for an iPad, but as a content delivery mechanism that fits into a jacket pocket or purse, it might be the perfect solution for many between phone and laptop. It seems to do the job slightly better than the Amazon Kindle Fire.

SPECIFICATIONS

Height: 8.1 inches
Width: 5.0 inches
Depth: 0.48 inches
Weight: 14.1 ounces1

• 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen
• 16 million+ colors, IPS2 display
• High resolution display—1024 X 600, 169 pixels per inch (PPI)
• Fully laminated with no air gaps for remarkable clarity and reduced reflection & glare-read indoors or outside

Adjustable Fonts

• 8 text sizes, 6 font styles, change background colors, line and margin spacing
• Look-up words in the built-in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition

Web and Email

• Supports Adobe® Flash® Player3
• Check & send email  (i.e., POP and IMAP webmail, including Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL and others)
• Parental controls to disable the Web browser
• Wireless connectivity via Wi-Fi® (802.11b/g/n)
• FREE Wi-Fi® in all Barnes & Noble stores

Microphone

• Record narration for kids’ Read and Record™ books

Supported File Types

• Loads EPUB (including Adobe DRM or DRM free) or PDF file types from your computer or microSD card
• Other documents: XLS, DOC, PPT, TXT, DOCM, XLSM, PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX
• Watch videos in MP4, or Adobe Flash Player format, 3GP, 3G2 MKV, WEBM (Video Codecs: H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VP8)
• Supports Netflix video up to 720p and sideloaded video up to 1080p; renders at 1024 x 600
• Load photos and create personal wallpaper: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Play audio on built-in mono speaker: MP3, MP4, AAC, AMR, WAV, OGG (Audio Codecs MP3, AAC, AMR, LPCM, OGG Vorbis)
• 1GHz TI OMAP4 (dual-core) processor with 1GB RAM
• Up to 11.5 hours of reading or 9 hours of video without recharging5
• Installed rechargeable battery
• Charge from a wall outlet using the in-box Power Adapter and USB Cable (charging time: approximately 3 hours from wall outlet)

Memory

Hold thousands of books, songs, videos, photos, & more

• 16 GB6 (up to 10,000 books) built-in memory (13 GB for content; 12 GB reserved for B&N content)
• Add up to 32GB with microSD™7 memory card

Pre-Loaded NOOK Apps™

• Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora® internet radio, Chess, Crossword, Sudoku, Media Gallery, NOOK Friends™, Email

In the Box

• NOOK Tablet
• USB Cable
• Quick Start Guide
• Power Adapter
• Rechargeable Battery (installed)

Connectors

• Universal 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack
• Charging port
• Expandable microSD8 slot

Read the Kindle Fire review