Barnes & Noble, the bookseller who is also known for its Nook brand of E-book readers has announced the launch of its new Tablet. The device, called the Nook Tablet would compete against archrival Amazon’s Kindle Fire which was announced back in September. The Nook Tablet is an updated version of the Nook Color e-book reader with quite a few feature additions.
The Nook Tablet has some impressive sounding specifications which makes the Kindle Fire already look outdated. The processor on both the devices however remains the same – an OMAP dual core chip that chugs along at 1 Ghz. The Nook tablet however packs in 1 GB of RAM which happens to be double that of the Kindle Fire. The Nook also gets much more storage capacity- 16 GB of onboard memory with the option to increase storage using micro SD cards. The Kindle Fire only gets 8 GB and that too with no option to expand it further. If that wasn’t all, only 6 GB of it is actually usable for the user.
The Nook Tablet gets a 7 inch display with a resolution of 1024*600. This is the same as that of the Kindle Fire. The Nook tablet however claims that its is the better display thanks to something known as “VividView”. This is nothing but an IPS display panel manufactured by LG. How better it actually is compared to the Kindle Fire is something that is yet to be seen.
Like the Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet also runs on a customized version of Android Gingerbread. The heavily customized OS means the device won’t be able to access apps on the Android Market. Apps currently designed for the Nook Color will work. The Kindle Fire here clearly has an advantage over the Nook when it comes to the apps because of Amazon’s own App Store which is much larger than that of Barnes & Noble’s.
For the extra features it gets over the Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble has priced the device at $249 which is $50 more than the Kindle Fire. Whether the market will accept an E-book reader/tablet for over $200 is something that is yet to be seen.
