Nook Tablet 16g: A review after one week

A week ago, Valentines Day actually, my wife bought me a Nook Tablet.  (At that point they were only available in the 16g version, the 8g came out yesterday.)

We landed on the nook because A.) we can’t afford an iPad at the moment and B.) after exhausting hours of research on the web trying to compare the Nook to the Kindle Fire this is where I finally landed. Why you may ask? Well let me tell you…

First of all if you read through all the reviews you may quickly find yourself bewildered. The ratings and rankings systems are all different and most take into account things you may not care about like “case design” or “which company is cooler”.  Certainly check them out but at the end of the day the deciding factor for me was memory. Nook has a card slot, that’s up to 32g more memory, (twice as much as my iPhone 3gs), and the Kindle does not.

There’s more to THAT story though when you read the reviews: Kindle has 8g on board Nook has 16g, but Kindle has access to cloud storage but Nook has the card slot…blah, blah, blah… but the card slot was the deciding factor for me.

After a week here’s what I like and don’t like about the Nook Tablet:

Like:

  • 16g storage on the device. My iPhone is 16g and I haven’t filled it up in three years
  • Battery life is phenomenal. I plug it in at night and it lasts all day. Even on a travel day flying from Colorado to Washington DC and using it continuously
  • Card slot, already using it to watch movies
  • Graphics. The picture is as good or better than my wife’s iPad
  • It’s fast. I don’t use the on board web browser, I use Dolphin, free, awesome.

Don’t Like:

  • The 16g is partitioned. 1g for your stuff, 15g for stuff you get from Barnes and Noble. I like a little more freedom in choosing vendors.
  • Navigation feels clunky. It could just be that it is not very intuitive and I’ll get used to it.
  • I HATE searching on the B&N store. “Search” for apps returns books and apps and letters from foreign dignitaries.
  • It still feels like a reader, with some added features rather than a tablet that has a great reader app. Even at the user manual level which is pretty clunky in and of itself.
  • No Camera. I thought I would be MORE bothered by this but it really probably shouldn’t be in the don’t like column. The camera on my phone is good enough that I don’t miss having one here.

Getting to like better:

  • I have been able to find apps to consolidate twitter and facebook, to manage my blog, and to edit Microsoft Office docs so it IS getting more useful than just media.
  • With the release of the 8g Nook B&N will allow 16g users to repartition their hard drives to free up 8g for personal use. I’m in on that. That’ll be a free upgrade sometime next month.
  • The memory card option. I’d be dead without it. Movies take up a lot of room. As my travel schedule ramps up I’m going to enjoy being able to bring some along and really enjoy having the battery life to watch them and still get work done.

After a brief week the device has grown on me. Sure I’d like an iPad but for less than half the price I’m finding the Nook Tablet is doing what I need it to do, is smaller to carry, and the battery lasts long enough to serve the entire day. At the moment I’d have to say I’m a converted fan.

Any Questions? How’s your search for the right tablet device working out?