Buy Nook HD+ get Simple Touch Free

[Zaap]

Until March 31st B&N has a promotion to get a Nook Simple Touch free when buying the Nook HD+ for $269.

Just curious what people here think. The HD+ doesn't seem like a bad 9" tablet, and it can be hacked. (I swore never again would I buy a B&N hardware product, but this deal seems hard to pass up.)

 

[Bateluer]

Here's the link to the B&N site with the details for promotion.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/nook-special-offer-free-ereader/379003944

I'm not too familiar with the Nook HDs, once they started locking down everything on them, I lost interest. But their e-ink readers are top notch.

 

[gorcorps]

Based on what I see on XDA, they're probably locked down again or at least there's very little development going on. It's a shame too because the HDs have one of the best screens I've seen on a tablet.

 

[bonkers325]

Great deal except you have to actually buy a nook hd

 

[Ravynmagi]

Looks like a nice deal. But I don't get why they redesigned the Nook HD 7 inch and it kinda looks okay now, but they left the Nook HD 9 inch still looking ugly like the old Nooks (I hate that design)?

If it was buy a Nook HD 7 inch and get a Nook Touch for free, I would probably do that. But I don't want the bigger Nook.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I saw this and was considering it as I've been wanting to see how my stepdad would fare with a tablet and/or an e-book reader. Main hangup is I'd like him to check out size in a store first but he's not the type that goes shopping much and so I haven't been able to. Either one would find a use with someone (I might would actually use an the reader more than a tablet myself), so it wouldn't go to waste but still have been holding off for some reason.

Oh, was meaning to see about Android running on this. Found that company that you can buy 4.1 for $20 but no idea how well it actually works.

Another reason I was holding off was kinda wanted a tablet with a camera to see about them doing Skype.

D'oh, I was also meaning to check into formats and things like that on the reader as I have a hunch Amazon would probably work a lot better for him.

 

[Tom]

Its kinda funny and sad that BN wastes money paying programmers to make the Nook HD undesirable..

when they could use their supposed expertise marketing books and other media to be an actual competitor to Amazon and/or Google and Apple.

Instead they'll just go bankrupt eventually becasue they're completely clueless.

 

[Zaap]

Pulled the trigger on it.

Not 5 minutes after it was out of the box I had CM10 installed in Hybrid mode. (ROM installs to both internal memory and SD card and boots either rooted stock B&N or CM10). Not that I'll likely ever boot into B&N ever again.

Haven't put it fully through its paces yet, but so far I have no trouble with CM10. It's nice and snappy, so far everything I've tried (games like ShadowGun, Real Racing 3, N4SMW, Netflix, GApps, eReaders, utilities, A/V apps, widgets etc.) runs fine on it.

Text looks excellent on the screen, very nice to read with. Movies (mp4 rips so far) look perfectly fine to me. Side by side comparisons I've seen with the iPad 3/4 show that the iPad res/colors/contrast are of course far better, but on its own the Nook HD+ screen looks excellent to my eyes.

As for the styling, I don't really mind it- the bezels are still the same scale to the original Nook Color/Tablet, but at 9" that makes them seem smaller and the whole device sleeker. The only design element I don't really dig is that stupid open lower corner. Not sure why they didn't just drop that, since the Nook HD does away with it. The SD slot is on the bottom so there's no need for the corner except some B&N marketing guy must think it's a signature look or something.

For me, the size is absolutely perfect. Not too big, not too small. For reading eBooks, the screen size and sharpness could hardly be better. Reading a full magazine page in zoomed out view is just on the borderline of acceptable. Ditto with comics full-page. Still requires quite a bit of zooming around to get a good experience, but nowhere near as much as a 7" tablet.

As for holding it while reading, the size and weight feel perfect- in fact, it feels lighter to me than my 7" Nook Tablet, even though it's roughly 100 grams heavier. It's definitely lighter in proportion to its greater size. The bezels and slightly-rubbery feel to the back make it comfortable to hold.

At first I wasn't crazy about the location of the volume buttons on the top of the device rather than the side, but they actually make a lot of sense when watching content in landscape mode.

I didn't care much for the standard Android keyboard in CM10, but once I installed both Float and Split Tablet, and Thumb Keyboard, I'm able to type very comfortably on it. I'll probably add SwiftKey Tablet on it also and just switch between them.

I'd say it's definitely a tablet worth checking out, the free Simple Touch was just icing on the cake. It looks like the perfect little "take anywhere" device just for grabbing a quick read. For me, since I wanted a B&W eReader and a > 7" tablet, getting both at this level of 'decent' for less than $300 was too good to pass up.