As long as you're aware of, and can live with, a few limitations, it's hard to beat. Most "real" tablets have at least one camera for video conferencing and are a bit faster. Beside that, they really don't have much more than you get with a Nook... and they can't touch it on price.
A friend of mine just bought an Archos 7 inch tablet, and returned it after 2 to 3 days because it was so sluggish. He was thinking about a Nook, but ended up buying an Elocity 7 inch tablet for $300. It's got a camera and runs on a Tegra 2, but it's stuck on Froyo. Personally, I'd take the Nook's lack of camera and slower CPU for the availability of Cyanogen... After the sale, manufacturers have zero incentive to keep up with the latest versions of Android, so being able to run Cyanogen, which is constantly updated, counts for a lot.
If your iPad has 3G, so you have access to mobile data if you want/need it, then the Nook is a great option to dabble with an Android tablet. Personally, I think the size is perfect - it's comfortable to hold and the screen is plenty big enough to read or watch Netflix without being too big. You will need a MicroSD card, which adds to the price, but unless you'll want to store a bunch of movies or music, you only need a small one, even a 2 gig would be fine. I fit 7 to 8 full movies on the internal memory, so I almost regret blowing the money on a 16 gig SD card. I haven't tried Honeycomb on mine, mostly because it's reported to be a little buggy, but Cyanogen runs great on it.