I’ve recently been on a 3 month quest to find the perfect Nook Tablet cover and I believe I have.  The $70 Oberon Design Nook Tablet Cover is not only the best Nook Tablet cover that I’ve evaluated, it may be the best anything cover I’ve ever evaluated.

Oberon Design is a small company located in Santa Rosa, CA, in the heart of Sonoma county that has been make handcrafted leather products since 1972.  The company was founded by Brendan Smith based on a strong quality of vision and ingenuity.  Mr. Smith, a passionate artisan, first began sewing leather with a needle and thread in his bedroom at his parents’ house.  He expanded his knowledge working at a local saddlery and later published a “how to” book entitled Brendan’s Leather Book which is now out of print.  Throughout this time, Brendan continued building Oberon Designs based on the old-school principles he’d learned at the saddlery.

Needless to say, the leather that the Nook Tablet Clover is made of is top-notch, as is the pewter clasp.  Everything is made in-house at Oberon Designs, which is surprising because they fulfilled my order in 2 days, which I think is pretty fast for a handmade leather product.

Oberon Designs Nook Tablet Cover

As you can see, the cover is hand tooled and uses a matching pewter button for a clasp.  Twenty two different designs are available and each design is available in three colors – usually green, blue, or brown.  Honestly, each cover is a work of art.  There is a fairly well designed attachment system that relies on 3 leather corners, a metal hook, and an elastic corner to hold the Nook Tablet sturdily.  While this closure system does a great job holding and protecting the Nook Tablet, I felt that the typical 3 tab method of Nook mounting makes it easier to get the device in and out of the cover.  However, I have dropped, thrown, and smashed my Nook inside this case and it was thoroughly protected.

The cover also uses a clever, although somewhat cumbersome, string and leather tab mechanism to hold the Tablet on its side for watching movies.  It works, but I end up pulling strings and wrapping them around tabs and it is pretty tricky.  There’s a wool felt screen protector on the inside surface of the cover, which does a very good job but has some strange magical power to attract and subsequently become coated with cat hair.  And finally, there are a few pockets in the cover, one of which is a great size for business cards.

I’ve had the case for about a month and I really like it.  My Nook Tablet is safe and sound plus the case looks fantastic.  I especially like the contrast of the old-school hand-tooled leather with the techie Nook Tablet.