Barnes & Noble have officially announced the release of their new tablet reader, named simply the Nook tablet. It is designed to offer direct competition to Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and the two devices are in fact quite similar.
The Nook tablet will sell for $249, which is $50 more than the Kindle Fire, but will also come equipped with double the storage (16GB) and double the RAM (1GB). The device itself is also quite similar to the Nook Color, but the tablet’s specs will make it possible to use it for HD video content, as well as books and magazines.
The device is equipped with a modified version of Android, and will come with apps like Hulu, Netflix and Pandora, which is something else it has over the Kindle Fire. The access to apps, however, will be more limited, and there is no access to the Android Market at all.
Like the Kindle Fire, the Nook tablet is Wi-Fi only (no 3G option), and the cloud storage options are not as strong as Amazon’s. Coinciding with the launch, Barnes & Noble announced a significant price-drop for the Nook Color and the Nook Simple Touch, which will now sell for $199 and $99 respectively. Even if you’re not a tablet fan, the general move to tablets is definitely making the simple eReaders more accessible.
So will you rush out to get the Nook tablet? Do you think it is superior or inferior to the Kindle Fire?
Source: AndroidCentral
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If I was getting one as a gift, I’d go for the Nook. But if I have to buy one, I’ll wait and see which device gets rooted first. Without access to the real Market, they do nothing for me.
Nooks (since Nook Color) are the darlings of rooting community especially because they have microSD slot (not on Kindle Fire) thus Nooks can be rooted by burning OS image on the microSD card and booting off it without rooting the actual device and voiding the warranty. On Kindle, once you rooted there’s no coming back.
The Kindle Fire is also getting Netflix and many other apps:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/09/facebook-twitter-netflix-and-several-thousand-more-apps-set/
No Hulu on Kindle Fire.
BTW, does the Fire have Android Market?
No, only Amazon app store.
One of the things I can’t stop thinking about is: Which company will still be in business 2-3 years from now? I have faith in Amazon. If I buy there product, I can sell it when I upgrade in a few years and get some money back. I’m not so sure about Barnes and Noble. The other thing is the price. Fifty dollars isn’t a trivial amount of money.
Also, that 16 GB of RAM is mostly used by the tablet. Very little of it is available to the user. Yes, you can insert a SD card for more, but the 16 GB listed is extremely misleading.
it’s not 16 GB of RAM – it’s 1.0 GB of RAM vs. 512 MB of RAM on Kindle Fire while 16 GB is the space for OS and data vs. 8 GB for OS and data on Kindle Fire
I’d hold off on calling it “impressive specs”.
There’s actually only 1 GB of storage available for personal items and a B&N employee has confirmed this with me. Like Geoff said, the 16 GB is very misleading.
Also, the Kindle Fire does have Netflix and Pandora and is bidding on Hulu right now. Updated information on Makeofuse articles is always nice to see…
True, perhaps, but Nook has the ability to expand its memory with a 32gb SD card. Also, Amazon’s price of $199 is misleading, as it requires the annual purchase of additional “cloud” storage in order to store any non-amazon content. Because so much of purchased content, Amazon or otherwise, must be stored in the “cloud,” this content will only be available when there is immediate access to wi-fi. So, for example, you would be NOT able to stream a movie while on an airplane, on the beach, etc. This required accesss to wi-fi also substantially shortens the battery life. Because of the nook’s ability to store and expand memory locally, it will not face these issues.
Well, the Nook tablet is well-designed, and seems not bad too, but I would like to buy an Amazon kindle fire, as the Amazon would have a large app circles, I can get many app for the kindle fire, at least many e-books! Besides, I have already got many apps prepared for the kindle fire such as aneesoft amazon kindle fire video converter. :p
I could be wrong, but I believe that nook already has over 1,000 available apps. And, at least according to Barnes & Noble, far more ebooks available to download.
Features of Nook Tablet – 1.0 Ghz dual-core processor, 1.0 GB of RAM, 16 GB of storage, battery is 11.5 hours reading and 9 hours of video, microSD slot up to 32 GB, fully non-glare laminated HD screen with the best viewing angles on the market, loaded with optimized Netflix, Hulu Plus and bunch of other apps (Pandora, Angry Birds, etc.), has a built-in microphone can be used with Skype for voice conferencing and for dictations with speech recognition software, weights only 14.1 oz