Nook HD+ review with CM 10.1

[rushless]

First of all, Very and Leap- you two rock something fierce!

I did a review before of the HD+ with 2.1. I gave it a good review, but three things slowly eroded my opinion after time and I returned it.

1- Intermittent stutter that seemed to correlate with on the fly data loads and library sync. This stood out with games.

2- Games loading slow and some REAL sloooooow

3- Accumulative lag. Over a few days, the device got real slow and cache cleaning and restarts were hit and miss to fix it.


Best Buy had it on sale for $20 less this time ($180), so based on folks opinion of CM 10.1, I thought I would test it out again- due to the price and sweet display.

Where 2.1 was a big improvement over 2.0, the improvement from 2.1 to CM 10.1 is fluken' huge!

1- The intermittent stutter is gone along with library sync is gone.

2- Games load a LOT faster. I would not have thought the stock rom would be what was slowing it down, but I tested fresh installs two times with the same sloooow results with 2.1.

3- So far, the accumulated lag has not showed up.

4- Overall device is faster


I also added the "full screen" app to get rid of the navigation bar when I want. More just to test it out, but nice to have an iPad like full display view

Jeepers, it is wild how it is so easy to flash the device with 10.1 and equally wild to have the results of 10.1 with this hardware for the price. Superb so far

Of course, with anything in life comes the negatives:

1- exFAT worked with 2.1, but does not with CM 10.1. I had to transfer, format and recopy back to the sd card with FAT32. I wish there was a simple install fix using the boot card like the unknown sources fix for stock 2.1.

2- Buggy Blitz does not work. I love that game Ditto for Shine Runner. Same company.

3- I have had one instance so far where the device had charged and there was a flashing green light. The device would not wake up with neither home or power button. I had to hold the power down for a while and repeat that a few times. It would get stuck on the spinning boot-up ring. It would freeze up after after "several" seconds. Seems to be working now, but this never happened with stock 2.1 and used the device for a month. Fluke?

4- Quake 3 keeps expecting to see "sdcard" rather than "sdcard0". Touch Quake 1, 2 and Quake Arena mods work fine though. These are examples of games that loaded SLOW with stock 2.1, but are near instant with CM 10.1.

5- The CM 10.1 launcher was jittery and slow. I tried to get used to it, but went back to Nova, which is smooth and fast.



Folks, Nook HD+ plus CM 10.1 equals insane value for the price!

 

[verygreen]

1- exFAT worked with 2.1, but does not with CM 10.1. I had to transfer, format and recopy back to the sd card with FAT32. I wish there was a simple install fix using the boot card like the unknown sources fix for stock 2.1.

there's 3rd party zip you can flash that restores it somewhat..

I also plan to look into this eventually and use texera fat module from the stock rom.

2- Buggy Blitz does not work. I love that game

That seems to be their bug related to new sgx drivers. Same crash happens on Kindle fire, for example. Nothing I can presently do about it.

3- I have had one instance so far where the device had charged and there was a flashing green light. The device would not wake up with neither home or power button. I had to hold the power down for a while and repeat that a few times. It would get stuck on the spinning boot-up ring. It would freeze up after after "several" seconds. Seems to be working now, but this never happened with stock 2.1 and used the device for a month. Fluke?

Not sore about not waking up - never saw that. But rare boot problems will be fixed in next release. (esp. those that produce garbage on screen).

Folks, Nook HD+ plus CM 10.1 equals insane value for the price!

Still no camera, so it cannot serve as full TP replacement

 

[rushless]

No problem on the games not working, since works on my Excite 7.7 and S3!

Exfat and NTFS would be nice, down the road!

Thanks!

 

[View92612]

I think B&N could have done much better with this hardware if they hired someone like verygreen in the first place...
I still don't think this is a very good gaming device, though, especially for 3D.
But the screen is amazing and got me really spoiled. Now I look at Nexus 7 and feel the display is too cheap and low in quality. Comparing it with the TP in my opinion is a bit of an apple to orange comparison as it is mainly a media consumption device while TP's display quality is even worse than Nexus 7.
Someone was complaining the Nook being slow and laggy vs a $499 Galaxy Note 10.1 with 2GB ram, quad core and much lower resolution. That is just unfair. But I guess people are entitled to their opinions.

Honestly I would not have bought this without seeing the CM10 and CM10.1 ports in progress. B&N really owes verygreen a commission. I like this combo so much that I hardly touch my Nexus 7 now.

BTW, donation sent.

 

[verygreen]

Comparing it with the TP in my opinion is a bit of an apple to orange comparison as it is mainly a media consumption device while TP's display quality is even worse than Nexus 7.

While I somewhat agree here, in reality I distributed Touchpads to my relative and they use them for things like Skype.

Nook, having no camera, cannot replace them and would be useless for such purposes.

 

[e.mote]

I agree that the Nook has deficiencies (proprietary ports are a downer). When it comes to cheap toys we pick our poison, eg Nexus w/ no SD slot. If I want a cam or HDMI, there are a flood of cheap 7" tabs that have both, but none of them has a really great 1080p screen in an IMO perfect size and weight for one-handed use. I don't see any tablet with comparable display quality under $400.

Display quality aside, as a reader my preference is for a 4:3 aspect, since I use the tab mostly in portrait mode. But outside of the iPads, most Android tabs hewed to 16:10, which makes the display smaller than their diagonal size would indicate. The HD+ is the only one to eschew the norm in going with 3:2. That's actually better than 4:3, because the present Android UI takes off a couple slices at top and bottom, so the remaining space comes out pretty close to 4:3.

Using the dpi calculator here,

http://members.ping.de/~sven/dpi.html

The 9" HD+ screen has a portrait width of 4.99". The 8.9" KF HD's is 4.72", or 0.27" smaller and not just 0.1" shorter diagonal. For tablet display size, every fraction of an inch is a big deal when you're squeezing a whole web page into portrait.

Some other display portrait widths, which I view as the tablet's true size measurement:

iPad Mini      4.71"
Nexus 7        3.71"
Galaxy Note 8  4.24"

Nexus 10       5.3"
iPad           5.82"

 

[rushless]

Oh yeah, e.mote: Thanks for the "dummies" thread!

True on the lack of camera, but I got it for books, comics (more than books) and games (mainly emulators). There are a few games that my Excite 7.7 plays smoother, but most play the same and game emulators like MAME and N64 are faster on the Nook HD+. Also, CM 10.1 closed the gap on the 3D games that are smoother on the Excite 7.7. GTA is a good example. It plays smooth now, where with 2.1, it did not. Asphalt 7 though is an example that plays smoother on the Excite. Asphalt 7 though is now very playable on the Nook HD+. The TF700 also struggles with some 3D games, BTW.

For game emulators. this thing rocks. $180 for a great display and plays emulators better than any other Android I have used- including the S4 and its quad Qualcomm. Bluetooth game pads work fine and no response lag noted so far and fits the iCade

Sad that we get the stock firmware we get when folks here do a better job for user experience. I appreciate the Nook was designed to be mainly a reader, but their premise was also part of their undoing and the convention of poor stock firmware goes way beyond the Nook.

 

[e.mote]

>Thanks for the "dummies" thread!

I actually wrote that for myself, since I have a stack of HD+'s here that I'm retrofitting to pass along to the family. Credit where it is due, it's all a rehash of what leapinlar has written, but just a bit more digestible. And of course to verygreen that made this all possible.

Glad to hear Nook is good for games. I'm not a gamer, but other peeps in the household would be appreciative. Any good guides for emulators you can point to? How about some strategy/tactical games? I liked Call of Cthulhu and Rebuild.

BTW, little known factoid: The Nook's serial # is printed on the inside of the SD slot's rubber flap. I found that out when returning a HD+ for uneven backlighting.

>I appreciate the Nook was designed to be mainly a reader, but their premise was also part of their undoing and the convention of poor stock firmware goes way beyond the Nook.

I view it as a good-thing-bad-thing situation. If B&N had made a great Android tab, it wouldn't be holding a firesale to clear out the Nooks, and we wouldn't be here yakking away. So yes, I'm kinda glad the HD's didn't sell well (until now).

 

[rushless]

Very ironic.

As far as emulator guides, there is a very good one over at Phandroid forums. It is in the Android game forum.

This tablet is an old school gaming, comic reading, web and Flash slinging bargain.

 

[View92612]

Very ironic.

As far as emulator guides, there is a very good one over at Phandroid forums. It is in the Android game forum.

This tablet is an old school gaming, comic reading, web and Flash slinging bargain.

Totally agree. What controller do you use for the emu, though?
I found it extremely difficult to trigger complex moves (in games that require those) using just touch control..... I'm sure it would not be an issue for games that do not require those.

 

[rushless]

I use a generic Android controller from Gamestop, two Nyko Android pads and iCade. All work fine.

I found another game that worked with 2.1 but not with CM. NBA 2013. Another of my favorites. What are the odds of that? It loads to the point of showing the team logos at start up and then crashes.

Also, most games like NFSMW that took a long time to load up with 2 .1 now load fast like other tablets. The only exception found so far is Asphalt 7. It still loads crazy slow. About two minutes or more per track. Should take about ten seconds. The London level just took over two minutes. Almost three.

The game plays good though. Much smoother (no stutter) than 2.1, but that is the case for all games so far. Odd how Asphalt 7 seems the only slow load hold out. I have tested a ton. A7 appears to be an anomaly.

CM 10.1 BTW also confirms to me the main stutter was not the gpu, but the stock rom. As per Anandtech, the 4470 is still a capable chipset.

I also compared A7 on the GS3. They appear to play very similarly as far as smoothness. GS3 might be a tad smoother, but does not stand out. The GS3 plays all of my games smooth, but the Nook smacks it down as far as MAME. 4470 appears to be a great emulator chipset.

 

[rushless]

I figured out why a few games do not work. Quake 3 need the files on the SD card and looks like NBA 2013 is trying to run the game from there too. It installs to internal, but installs a directory also in the SD with no files. I am going to move it to the SD and see what happens.

Update. Looks like ports like Quake 3 work fine, but commercial games do not work when moving the files.