Published: 8 November, 2011
As expected Barnes & Noble has made its new Nook official this week and it definitely falls out of e-reader/tablet limbo and into solid tablet territory. With specs that should make the Kindle Fire sweat a little and a price tag that is almost as competitive and offers a range of services to combat Amazon's.
Key features of the device include a 7" display, dual-core 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. There's a generous 16GB of internal storage which is expandable with a microSD card slot. This is distinct advantage over the Kindle Fire which only offers 8GB of internal memory that is not expandable. Battery life is another impressive feature and will last for 11.5 hours of reading or 9 hours of movie watching. The Nook Tablet ships with Android 2.3 installed.
With Netflix, Hulu and Pandora integration the device will offer a range of multimedia services to help make it competitive with Amazon's tablet. In terms of its design it's very similar to the previous iterations of the Nook and is ten percent lighter than the Nook Color at 14.1oz.
The Nook Tablet can be pre-ordered now and will go on sale properly next week on November 17, wearing a price tag of $249. As for the Nook Color which already was as much a tablet as it was an e-reader Barnes & Noble will be releasing an update for it that's set to offer over one-hundred improvements and is going to continue selling it for a Kindle Fire-matching price of $199.
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On the surface for an extra $50 the Nook Tablet is very competitive with Amazon's Kindle Fire though despite the praise gained by the Nook Color it still wasn't enough to topple the Kindle in the e-reader stakes.