Barnes & Noble Introduces Nook Tablet

Barnes & Noble unveiled their newest Nook iteration: The Nook Tablet. This is the book chain’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. I speculated in an earlier post how B&N will respond to Amazon’s tablet computer. I only said if they don’t already have something in the pipeline, it could be a bad holiday season for the world’s largest bookseller.

Luckily for them, that’s not the case.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Here are some of the features the new tablet/eReader sports:

• HD movies, TV shows and music from the top names—Netflix, Hulu Plus™, Pandora® & more
• World’s most advanced VividView™ 7″ Touchscreen
• Over 2.5 million books, magazines, comics & kids’ books
• Lightning fast Email, Web & smooth streaming video
• Thousands of must-have apps like Angry Birds and Epicurious
• 16 GB of memory, extra-long battery life—yet ultra-light and thin
• Always free NOOK support in-store

I looked to see how the Nook Tablet compares to the Nook Color. Both are very similar in that they are tablet computers. The most obvious difference is the price: The Color is a thrifty $199 and the Nook Tablet will set you back $249.

Other differences I noticed are as expected. The Nook Color comes with 8GB of memory (expandable to 32GB), whereas the Nook Tablet comes with 16GB memory. Also, the Color carries an 8-hour battery charge while the Tablet will give you about 11 hours of use. Both feature 7″ displays.

The Nook Tablet will be available on November 18. For comparison, Amazon’s Kindle Fire will be available November 15. We won’t know which one will win the tablet wars until sometime after Christmas. This will give people plenty of time to play with their shiny new toys and give thoughtful reviews online.

After a quick study, it appears that the new Nook Tablet is very much a Kindle Fire under a different brand and name. Both are priced at $199, both have a 7″ display and both come with 8GB of memory. I think the Fire has a little more battery juice than the new Nook.

It’s a good time to be an eReader/tablet computer enthusiast. If you asked me a few years back, I would’ve said that people would prefer reading ebooks on dedicated eReaders rather than tablets. My reasoning was that tablet computers had too many distractions. Based on the soaring popularity of tablet computers these days, I was wrong.

Related Posts

• Barnes & Noble Introduces New 7″ Color Touchscreen eReader
• Barnes & Noble To Sell Nook eReaders At Target
• Barnes & Noble releases the Nook digital reader
• Barnes & Noble Debuts The Nook Simple Touch Reader
• Vtech Introduces New Children’s Tablet Computer

Read More: eBooks, eReaders, Nook, Tablet Computers, Technology