Nook Tablet review: Higher price but better specs

November 27, 2011 | Filed under: Business | Posted by:

By NVONews Tech Correspondent,

Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet is hogging the limelight. It was a year ago that Barnes & Noble launched Nook Color, a color eReader. For a year, the company did not bring out an heir to its Amazon Kindle competitor. But now following Amazon, Barnes & Noble has produced a tablet with Android OS. Here we take Nook Tablet for a detailed review. Read on to see what new things Nook Tablet has to add into the growing 7-inch tablet frenzy.

Nook Tablet tech specs
Dimensions: The tablet is smaller and slighter. Being an eReader basically, Nook Tablet is ultra portable. It has the dimensions of 8.1 x 5.0 x 0.48 inches.
Weight: 14.1 ounces.

Display: The tablet rocks a 7-inch VividView color touchscreen with a high resolution of 1024 X 600 at 169 pixels per inch. The IPS2 display supports 16 million + colors and it is completely laminated with reduced reflection and anti-glare protection.

Processor: The tablet is powered by 1 GHz TI OMAP4 (dual-core) processor, which ensures brilliant performance for the color tablet.
RAM: 1GB of RAM.
Software: Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Memory: The tablet is built in with 16GB flash memory that can store up to 10,000 books. It also sports a microSD slots that can add up to 32GB memory stick for additional storage.
Camera: No cameras like Amazon Kindle Fire.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n)

Ports: Universal 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack.

File formats supported: EPUB, Adobe DRM, DRM free and PDF from MicroSD slot. Other text formats include PPTM, PPSX, PPSM, DOCX, XLX, PPTX, XLS, DOC, PPT, TXT, DOCM and XLSM.

The tablet supports video formats like MP4, 3GP, WEBM and 3G2 MKV, image formats like GIF, JPG, PNG and BMP and audio formats like MP3, MP4, AMR, WAV, and AAC.

Battery: The rechargeable battery provides up to 11.5 hours of reading or 9 hours of video playback. You can use both in-box Power Adapter and USB Cable for charging.

What makes it special
Rich preinstalled apps: Nook Tablet comes with lots of preinstalled apps. You can find leading streaming apps like Hulu Plus, Pandora, Netflix, Chess, Sudoku, Crossword, Email, NOOK friends, Barnes & Noble bookstore, Media Gallery and much more on the tablet.

Good storage option: Unlike its major rival Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet is up with better storage option. You have 16GB built-in storage and a microSD slot that can add up to 32GB external memory. It will help you store books, games, videos and audio in great numbers.

HD video: Even becoming a color eReader, Nook Tablet is for video watching also. You can enjoy high quality HD video on the device. It is able to stream HD video and bring to you in great quality.

Enhanced Bookstore: On Barnes & Noble bookstore, you have more than 2.5 million titles. Most of the books are priced at $9.99 or less, the company claims.

7-inch and Android tablet: It is a peak time for 7-inch Android tablets. Following Amazon Kindle Fire, we have now lots of products in the offing. Nook Tablet is now one of key members in the 7-inch Android tablet category.

Drawbacks
The biggest drawback of Nook Tablet is that it is priced above a range that others sell their 7-inch tablets. Amazon, Kobo Inc and Samsung have priced their 7-inch Android tablets, respectively Kindle Fire, Vox and Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus at $199. Priced at $249, there is better chance that many customers would not go for Nook Tablet that has no more outshining features over its competitors like Kindle Fire.
Pricing and availability
Barnes & Noble sells its Nook Tablet for $249. The price is $50 higher than the price of Kindle Fire, its chief rival in stores.

Wrap-up
Barnes & Noble was too late to introduce a successor to its Nook Color eReader. When all its competitors brought out fresh versions of their eReaders, the company lurked in the coziness of the success of Nook Color. But never did Barnes & Noble loiter in unveiling a multimedia tablet in competition to its rivals like Amazon. Soon after the announcement of Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble also came out with its Nook Tablet, one of chief contenders in the budding 7-inch tablet market now.

What others say
Los Angeles Times
“At $249, the Nook Tablet is a bit more expensive than the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Nook Color and the Kobo Vox, each of which are selling at about $200. But, the Nook Tablet is a better piece of hardware than its $200 rivals and the extra dough wouldn’t be spent in vain…On the outside, the Nook Tablet looks identical to the Nook Color, except that the Tablet comes in a lighter color than the Color’s dark charcoal gray”.

Associated Press
“For the most part, the Nook Tablet justifies the higher price tag compared to the Kindle. Of course, anyone with money to spend should also be looking at the iPad 2, which starts at $499 and does all of what these smaller tablets do — plus a whole lot more. That’s one Death Star that won’t be exploding in a hurry”.

Shortlink:

Posted by on November 27, 2011. Filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
  • J. FREEMAN

    I have the Kindle Fire. Ive never owned a tablet before, but I really do like this one. The price and details of it’s functions were selling points for me to finally get a tablet. I don’t want or need some over enhanced product that does way more than I’ll ever need it to do! Some people would surely buy a car with six tires if they made one, just because it had more tires! Know what you want and need from a tablet before you waste money using a $500 tablet to do $200 functions! One word, “OVERKILL”!

  • T.Conger

    When you say “Overkill” you must be referring to the Ipad, because your Kindle Fire is nearly identical to the Nook Tablet. They have the same processor and display. However, the 1 Gig of ram made available to the CPU, the 16 Gig of storage, the SD slot and the better battery life make the Nook worth the extra $50. I bought the Nook Tablet because I want to watch HD movies as well as view reading materials. If you only want to read books, why did you buy a tablet?

  • Joan

    I currently own the original Nook, black & white, no touch screen, though) and am looking for a simple tablet but love the Nook, so am very interested in this new Nook – BUT one of the things that made me originally get the Nook over the Kindle was the replaceable battery option. Does the new Nook have that option?