by Barnes & Noble isn’t trying to do everything with the Nook HD. Instead, the company’s 7-inch tablet focuses on doing what its Nooks have always done best: delivering the best reading experience you can get on any tablet today. By combining a high-resolution (243 pixels per inch) display with an attractive price and expandable storage, Barnes & Noble has positioned the Nook HD as a compelling tablet choice, especially if you plan to use it primarily for reading and Web surfing, though less so if you want to run the latest hot apps on it.
The Nook HD starts at $200 for the 8GB model, and the 16GB version retails for just $30 more. Though slightly pricier than the latest Amazon and Google tablet offerings, the 16GB Nook HD costs $100 less than Apple’s iPad mini—a tablet that has a noticeably lower screen resolution. More important, unlike any of the other three tablets mentioned, the Nook HD has a MicroSD card slot, so you can easily add up to 64GB of storage if you need it. That feature gives the Nook a degree of flexibility that the others can’t match.
All about the display
The Nook HD’s display sets it apart from the rest of the 7-inch tablet pack: The stunning 1440-by-900-pixel display has the highest resolution of any 7-inch tablet, according to Barnes & Noble; by comparison, the resolution of the Google Nexus 7 tops out at 1280 by 800 pixels.
The Nook HD’s display translates into a pixel density of 243 pixels per inch. That matches up well against the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD (at 216 ppi each) and the iPad mini (at 163 ppi). The Nook’s higher pixel density makes a big difference: Text looked universally smoother and sharper on the Nook HD, even when using the same fonts as the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7. For example, when I read Game of Thrones, the Nook HD showed less pixelation in text displayed in Georgia typeface than did the Kindle Fire HD using the same font.
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