There was a fourth dimension when Barnes & Noble was so big, so dominating, that even Tom Hanks managed to look like a jerk when he played a book-concatenation executive. Simply times have changed, and as people began to order their books online -- or even download them -- B&N found itself struggling to keep upward. Subsequently losing a lot of coin last year, the company decided information technology was time for a change: It vowed to stop making its own tablets, and instead team up with some 3rd-political party company to better take on Amazon and its Kindle Burn line. Turns out, that third party was none other than Samsung, and the fruits of their partnership, the $179 Galaxy Tab iv Nook, is basically a repackaged version of the existing Galaxy Tab 4 seven.0. Well, nearly, anyhow. The 7-inch slate comes pre-loaded with $200 worth of free content, and the core Nook app has been redesigned to the signal that information technology actually offers a better reading feel than the regular Nook Android app. But is that a good enough reason to buy this instead of a Kindle Fire? Or any other Android tablet, for that matter?

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook review | 14 Photos

Galaxy

Pros

  • Good-looking blueprint
  • Brilliant screen
  • The Nook app here is an improvement over the regular Nook for Android
  • Price includes some free books, magazines and Television receiver shows

Cons

  • Curt bombardment life compared to competing devices
  • Sluggish performance
  • Skimpy congenital-in storage

Hardware

Every bit you lot've already gathered, this is the same hardware you'll discover on the vii-inch Galaxy Tab 4, which came out 4 months ago. Since we never got around to reviewing that, though, I'll do a thorough walk-through here as if information technology were a brand-new device. What's funny is that depending on how you expect at information technology, you actually have seen this tablet earlier: The Nook (bachelor in black and white) has the same textured plastic backing as other recent Samsung devices. As I've said about other products, like the Chromebook 2, the leathery plastic and chrome accents go a long way in making an otherwise generic device look more than expensive than it is. As a bonus, the textured plastic doesn't pick up fingerprints, and information technology'due south pretty scratch-resistant, too. During my testing, I routinely tossed the tablet in a handbag with pointy items similar pens and keys, and information technology never emerged worse for article of clothing.

The Galaxy Tab iv Nook is a 7-inch device, so of course information technology'southward small, lightweight and easy to concur. At 0.35 inch thick, it'due south a lilliputian chubby compared to other small-screen slates, like the 8-inch Milky way Tab S. Even so, information technology weighs just 0.half-dozen pound, then let's not nitpick to the signal where we're calling this affair "heavy." It's not. And besides, y'all might fifty-fifty find that those wide, flat edges make the tablet easier to agree.

For a budget device, the screen is actually quite lovely. Sure, the one,280 x 800 resolution translates to a non-so-cracking pixel density of 216 ppi, but and so again, what more did you expect on a $179 tablet? For the money, you get a bright console with proficient viewing angles that's well-suited for reading and movie-watching. Fifty-fifty at one-half-effulgence, I had no issues using information technology on a long rail trip, with daylight streaming in through the window next to me.

Flip the device around and you lot'll find the usual spate of ports: a headphone jack up top, a micro-USB charging socket on the lesser, a speaker and 3-megapixel camera around back and a 1.3MP 1 up front. The right edge, meanwhile, is home to a book rocker, power button and IR blaster -- a adequately uncommon characteristic on a upkeep tablet. Nearby, you'll also discover a microSD slot supporting cards up to 32GB. Information technology's a shame, that -- you lot'll need every final flake of storage space to augment the device's skimpy 8GB of built-in retentivity, simply 2GB of which is user-accessible.

Software

The way Samsung and Barnes & Noble pitched the device, this is Samsung hardware mixed with B&Due north'south Nook software. That's a picayune misleading: This is a Samsung tablet, with Samsung's user interface, only with some Nook apps sprinkled in, too. What we take here is the same TouchWiz experience -- everything from the icons to the onscreen keyboard to the settings menu is the same as on other Samsung tablets. Likewise, there's Samsung'southward signature Multi Window characteristic, allowing you lot to view two apps side by side. Information technology fifty-fifty has Google Play access, so you can download all the apps yous'd install on any other Android device -- yes, including Amazon Kindle. What's squeamish, though, is that unlike other Samsung tablets, this one doesn't include Sammy's intrusive My Magazine -- big panels that sit to the left of the dwelling screen and tin can't be removed. I don't really like the Milky way Tab iv Nook, as y'all'll see, but I do wish other Samsung products had this scaled-back UI.

Other than that, the biggest deviation is that Sammy pre-loaded the Nook tablet with some key Barnes & Noble applications, including Nook Apps, Nook Library, Nook Search, Nook Settings, Nook Shop, Nook Today (a personalized recommendation engine) and Nook Highlights (useful if you cull to underline stuff as you're reading). You'll also detect (removable) widgets for your library and the Nook Store -- in fact, both were waiting for me on the home screen when I booted up the device.

Additionally, Samsung and Barnes & Noble tossed in some free content -- a motley drove of books, magazines, movies and TV shows said to be worth $200. There'due south something for anybody here; the flip side is that much of it will probably register as junk. On your bookshelf, To Kill a Mockingbird sits aslope a Danielle Steel romance and the child'southward title Pete the Cat. For film and Tv, there's the pilot episode of Veep, amid other shows, too as The Lego Flick. (Fortunately, the Nook has a parental control characteristic allowing for different user profiles.) If it's magazines you lot're after, you have a pick of three: United states Weekly, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated. Finally, you'll get $v in Nook Store credit. It'southward a squeamish gesture, but it won't make it: Five bucks isn't plenty to buy near e-books in B&N'southward catalog. Again, I'g sure the two companies meant well, just if it were a choice between extra content and a tablet with faster functioning and longer battery life, I'd cull the latter in a heartbeat.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook screenshots | 34 Photos

What's surprised me is that this is not a copy-and-paste of the regular Nook for Android app. Whereas the Nook awarding on my Moto X combines the library, search and shop functions into one place, the Galaxy Tab four Nook contains different apps for all those things. Whichever you utilise, the core functionality is the aforementioned: In improver to reading content, you can admission the store, highlight passages and rate/review stuff. But here, the icons are different, and you don't e'er have to drill as far into menus to get what you want (see: font options, search, table of contents). Highlighting text is also easier in the Samsung app than the regular Android ane. If anything, the UI feels more like to Barnes & Noble'due south e-ink east-readers, which is funny because that would seem to exist an entirely different grade of product. Certainly, this is a more pleasant Nook experience than what you lot'd get on other Android devices. Something to continue in heed if you're already a loyal Barnes & Noble customer.

Beside the various Nook apps, Samsung installed a few other third-political party programs equally well, including Dropbox, Hancom Office 2014, Netflix, OfficeSuite vii (the more robust of the two office programs here) and the game Rayman Jungle Run. You'll also find a shortcut to Samsung'south own curated app store -- you lot know, should Google Play not be enough. Obviously, this is a scrap of a mixed handbag, only to each his ain. You can at least uninstall annihilation that doesn't suit you.

Performance and bombardment life

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook ASUS MeMO Pad 7 and 8 ** Nexus seven (2013) Samsung Milky way Tab Southward *** Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (7-inch)
Quadrant 2.0 4,224 19,495 vi,133 eighteen,591 19,655
Vellamo 2.0 1,058 1,933 i,597 1,672 N/A
SunSpider ane.0.two (ms)* 1,636 607 602 1,109 554
3DMark IS Unlimited two,659 14,171 N/A 12,431 N/A
CF-Bench xi,474 22,284 15,366 31,695 North/A

*SunSpider: Lower scores are ameliorate.

**Average score for the vii- and 8-inch models.

***Boilerplate score for the 8.4- and 10.v-inch models.

I only saw the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook for the offset time last week, but already I've heard Barnes & Noble reps say several times that the tablet is built for reading. To some extent, they're only stating the obvious: Samsung and Barnes & Noble built a tablet together, and it'due south supposed to offer a smashing reading experience, because that's what B&N is proficient at. Duh. But I besides doubtable the two companies have been trying to keep our expectations in check. Even for a budget tablet, this thing is kinda tedious, and I think Samsung and Barnes & Noble both know it. Under the hood, it has the same internals equally the regular Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 -- a 1.2GHz quad-cadre Marvell PXA 1088 processor and one.5GB of RAM, a combination that sorely trails the competition in criterion tests. The results were so bad, in fact, that I thought at first the numbers might be flukes. Indeed, I ran the tests many, many times, and the results were always far below other tablets, even the similarly priced ASUS MeMO Pad 7, last year's Nexus 7 and the vii-inch Amazon Fire HDX.

That sluggishness rears its head in real-word use, too. The accelerometer was frequently irksome to catch upward equally I flipped the device from portrait to landscape mode and back. Web browsing is smooth enough, though the benchmarks advise you'd accept an even snappier experience on competing devices. Cold-booting the device takes a long 24 seconds, forcing you to wait through animated splash screens for both Samsung and Nook. Multi Window way works, merely it can accept a second or two for a new app to load if y'all decide to replace ane of the two panes. Fifty-fifty the Nook library -- the app that matters most -- was often slow to load up my bookshelf. Like other Samsung devices, the Nook was initially slow to minimize apps when I pressed the home push. Luckily, there's a solution, and it actually has to do with Southward Vox, of all things: Just become into Due south Vocalism settings and uncheck the box "open via the home primal." That way, when you press the home push button, the device won't await to see if you'll do a double-press to launch the voice assistant. With that effect, at least, I was able to improve the performance.

The trouble, too, is that for the folks ownership this, the Galaxy Tab iv Nook isn't but for reading. If it were, they'd go a standalone east-reader and phone call it a day. But if you're going to become an Android tablet, specially one with multi-window support and admission to the Google Play store, you probably want to practise more than simply read due east-books. You desire to download apps. Stream movies. Browse the spider web. Perchance play the occasional game. The Galaxy Tab 4 Nook can do nigh of that, but not always smoothly. Another device -- even a competing budget tablet -- will probably feel faster.

Tablet Battery Life
Samsung Milky way Tab four Nook 7:34
Microsoft Surface 2 14:22 (LTE)
Apple iPad Air xiii:45 (LTE)
Samsung Milky way Tab S (10-inch) 12:30
Samsung Milky way Tab S (8-inch) 12:22
Apple iPad mini with Retina display eleven:55 (LTE)
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (7-inch) 10:41 (WiFi)
Nexus vii (2012) 9:49
ASUS MeMO Pad 8 ix:21
Kindle Fire Hard disk drive (8.9-inch) 9:01
ASUS MeMO Pad vii 8:36
NVIDIA Shield tablet 8:23
Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet (2012) seven:57
Nexus seven (2013) 7:15

Samsung says the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook'southward battery can last upward to 10 hours. With light usage, that might well be true. But in our (admittedly taxing) video rundown test, the battery died out a few hours sooner. All in all, the tablet was able to last through about vii and a half hours of looping a 1080p video at fixed effulgence, with social networks periodically refreshing in the background. Again, your mileage will vary, but information technology's worth noting that other devices can do better. ASUS' MeMO Pad vii also got about an hr more than the Nook. Meanwhile, the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HDX managed well-nigh 11 hours in the same grueling test. Fifty-fifty the 2013 Nexus vii gets about the aforementioned runtime every bit the Milky way Tab iv Nook -- and the functioning is slightly better, too.

The competition

When the original Nook Tablet came out, it was easy to forgive some of its shortcomings, just considering the price was fairly low. At the time, $249 was inexpensive for an Android tablet, particularly when flagships routinely sold for $500 and up. This is a dissimilar time, though, and while $170 isn't bad for this new Nook device, it also faces stiffer contest. The ASUS MeMO Pad 7, for case, has a lower price of $150, complete with an IPS display, double the internal storage, longer battery life, a microSDXC slot supporting college-capacity cards and a quad-core processor that creams the Milky way Tab 4 Nook in benchmarks.

Meanwhile, Dell sells the $160 Venue 7, which has a 1,280 x 800 IPS screen and a higher-resolution 5MP rear photographic camera. (I haven't tested that, so I tin't vouch for the performance.) Finally, it comes with 16GB of storage, and tin can accommodate memory cards as large as 64GB. It goes without maxim, likewise, that any Android tablet is capable of running the standard Nook app. So far equally I can tell, then, the one thing the Galaxy Tab iv Nook has going for information technology is Multi Window back up, simply what good is that if the processor is too weak to handle it?

If yous're willing to spend more, the 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire HDX starts at $229 with 16GB of storage ($244 without ads on the lock screen). For the coin, almost everything is ameliorate: The battery life is several hours longer, and the performance is stronger, cheers to a adequately upward-to-date Snapdragon 800 processor and 2GB of RAM. The screen is sharper besides, with one,920 10 1,200 resolution and a tight pixel density of 323 ppi. You won't get Google Play admission, unfortunately, but Amazon's own app shop has grown steadily over the years, and its digital content selection is just as diverse equally Barnes & Noble's.

Amazon fifty-fifty basically matches B&North on technical support: Whereas Barnes & Noble offers lifetime in-store service for its Nook tablets, Amazon's built-in "Mayday" characteristic lets you access alive assistance anytime. Other than the fact that Amazon's tablet costs $50 more, information technology'south hard to say why you'd get the Galaxy Tab four Nook instead. Because fifty-fifty if having access to Google Play is of import to you lot, y'all'd still be better off with terminal twelvemonth's Nexus vii. Information technology costs $229, merely like the Kindle Fire HDX, and information technology likewise has a 1,920 10 one,200 screen. The performance won't be quite as brisk every bit the HDX, only it should notwithstanding be snappier than the new Nook tablet. The battery life is similar to the Nook as well, so you lot're not giving up anything in the mode of endurance.

Wrap-up

This should come as a stupor to no one, but the Milky way Tab iv Nook is only a skillful idea if you're already a loyal Barnes & Noble client. Setting aside the fact that information technology comes with free content (a gimmick, if yous ask me), this tablet is appealing considering it offers a better reading feel than fifty-fifty the regular Nook for Android app. Until Barnes & Noble redesigns its standard Android application, this is the best Nook experience you're going to get, short of buying one of B&Northward's standalone, e-ink e-readers.

Even then, that's a stretch: It's non like the regular Nook app is and then bad that you shouldn't consider other Android tablets. If you're non even a Nook customer, then there'south definitely no reason to buy this. Sure, the design is nice, and the screen is bright, just the battery life is short compared to competing devices, and the performance is slower. Adding insult to injury, you get less born storage for apps, books, photos and music, and the microSD slot doesn't officially back up cards larger than 32GB. For people who just desire a budget Android tab, and don't care where they buy their books, you lot can practice better, fifty-fifty for $179.