Barnes & Noble Nook HD review

Another top feature is the ability to add multiple user profiles and tailor content to each one. You can even create a profile for your kids, complete with parental controls which allow you to limit what movies show up by certificate, and whether kids can access the browser and the shop, all protected by a password. Android 4.2 on the Google Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 lets you create multiple user accounts too, but there’s nowhere near as much control as on the Nook HD.

You get multiple user support with limited accounts for kids

There’s plenty of content in the store, though, including a good selection of books and magazines, and purchasing is a straightforward two-click process. In the event that you can’t find what you’re looking for in the store, the Nook HD supports Adobe Digital Editions, so you can simply plug it in to your PC or laptop and transfer purchases from most other ebook stores. You won’t be able to copy across Amazon books, though, due to their proprietary, closed format. Alas, at the time of writing the Nook video store wasn’t yet up and running.

The store is great for books, but less impressive for music, games and apps. Although you do get a music player there’s no integrated music service to match Amazon’s, and the selection of apps in the Barnes & Noble store is pitiful. Although we did find a smattering of big names – Angry Birds Star Wars, Fruit Ninja, Twitter, Spotify, Flipboard, Netflix and Plex – as soon as we started digging deeper, gaping holes began to appear. At the time of writing we could find no official Facebook app, no BBC iPlayer, and the selection of modern games is even thinner, with no Asphalt 7, no Shadowgun and no Dead Trigger.

There’s a lack of apps, but the web browser is good

That’s a shame, as the tablet is clearly up to running complex programs, as a swift 1,243ms in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark shows. Battery life is also superb, with the Nook HD managing 12hrs 35mins in our continuous video playback test.

All this makes it tricky to assess the Nook HD. The quality of the hardware, with its amazing display, expandable memory and excellent build and design, puts the Nook HD at the front of the budget tablet pack, and is even better than the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD. The UI is great, the tablet has impressive performance and reading books and magazines on its high density display is a joy. And yet, until there’s a decent library of apps and games to download, the Nook HD’s appeal will remain limited.