Last March I wrote about the Nook 8GB Color Tablet that I bought for my wife the previous October, saying how much I liked it, though I didn’t have one, and how she was happy to have it. Well, this year I bought one a few days after Christmas, only better than the one I bought her, and I’m talking about it as well as putting in a product link if you want to check it out; hey, I’m allowed to try to make money here and there, right? 🙂

Nook HD

The tablet I purchased was the Nook HD, and it’s a major step above the one I bought her, in more ways than one.

I’ll get to the immediate details that concern the HD part of it all. Initially I couldn’t figure out why I wanted the HD; turns out I didn’t have much of a choice. They discontinued making the one I bought her in favor of the upgrade, and it only makes sense. While she could watch videos that we can download off YouTube (Nooks play MP4 video files), she couldn’t watch any HD videos on hers, and sometimes that’s the only choice you’re given. On mine, I get full HD, which is pretty cool.

Next, let’s talk capacity. Her Nook was an 8GB, which was as high as it went, and you could put a 32GB microSD card in it for more storage. Mine came in either 8 or 16 GB, but I can put as much as a 64GB microSD in it, though I went for the 32GB for now because of the price. So you know, I bought the microSD at Staples rather than at B&N or at Best Buy because it cost less; that might not always be the case. Why do you need more capacity? Because HD files take up a lot more space, even at 16GB, which I filled up, surprisingly.

Because I bought my own, I know more about it and thus I can now talk more about all the features. I have paid for and downloaded two books onto it. One of those books I actually purchased for real, but it was too big and unwieldy to carry around anywhere, and way too big to even read in bed. The Nook HD is 7″ high, light and easy to carry, and has a nice range of brightness so that I can make it either really bright, which is crystal clear, or darken it, which I do when reading late at night and my eyes don’t want to deal with all that light.

A neat thing about the books is that you can change sizes of the font, font colors, fonts themselves and the color of the background. That’s pretty neat, something the old one couldn’t do. And you have them for as long as you have your Nook.

Magazines will be interesting for me. There’s one I still subscribe to, PC World, and I’m thinking about switching it to the Nook. The magazines stay as long as you want them, and of course it’s easier to carry magazines around with you on the Nook than taking them outside of the house. And it turns out that the price of the magazines is the same as the price of regular magazines; neat. You can also subscribe to newspapers but the choices are limited, and I couldn’t find one that addressed local news so I won’t be going that route.

You can move both audio and video files, as well as images. The sound isn’t bad, and you can buy small speakers to attach if the sound isn’t loud enough for you. However, I’ve found that the sound on the HD is better and louder naturally than on the original. And the types of videos I’ve been adding have been things like TED talks, documentaries, and some cartoons. Some of these things I watch, then delete; a few I plan on keeping, such as the 20 minute opening to the movie The Secret, which always seems to make me feel better.

It’s also wi-fi if you happen to be in an area where you can access it. If you’re in B&N itself you can read books for up to an hour on the Nook for free, which could be a way to get around having to buy a book if you’re sneaky like that. However, you have to sign in with a credit card, which I wasn’t up for. Still, being able to access the internet is cool. And there are apps you can search for and add; I added Evernote since I have it on my computers and my smartphone; access everywhere!

One last thing. The battery holds much longer than using my smartphone, which immediately makes it a better reader overall. I’ve loaded some of my pdf files (yeah, I have lots of them) and my Word Doc files (I’m working on a detective story, as some of you know), as it accepts those formats as well as many others. Frankly, last year I was kicking myself because I didn’t buy one sooner, and now I think I’d have been kicking myself if I hadn’t waited for the HD.

That’s all I can think about to say so I’ll leave it there. By the way, it’s still rated higher than the Kindle; just thought I’d toss that into the mix. I love this thing, so I have no hesitation in talking about it and in trying to help market it. Any questions, just ask, but I hope you check it out if you want something that’s more than just a reader.
 

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