They are equal. The engineered is still real walnut but instead of being 3/4" it might only be 1/4 with the rest being made up birch or pine(depends on the mill) to make up the final thickness.

Hardwood is a term that refers to wood coming from a particular type of tree. Walnut is a hardwood. Different hardwoods have different levels of hardness. In general, if you compare a solid American Walnut to one that's of engineered construction, they will perform the same with respect to hardness.
Walnut is among the softer hardwoods. If you're concerned about hardness, look to something other than American Walnut.

We have engineered oak flooring in our basement and oak hardwood flooring upstairs. We chose our engineered floors because the wood portion was thicker than other engineered floors, thus enabling more refinishing. We are very happy with the looks and how well the engineered floors have aged (now about 11-12 years old). However, we had a couple staying in our basement for a couple years and her high heels did leave small dents in the engineered flooring. We've only had our hardwood floors for about a year-and-a-half, but so far nothing (including high heels) have dented them.

This post was edited by sail-away on Fri, Jan 3, 14 at 20:00