Barnes & Noble unveils Nook Tablet
— -- Barnes & Noble is set to fight fire with fire — Amazon.com's upcoming Kindle Fire tablet that is. At a Manhattan press conference today, the venerable bookseller is unveiling its own brand new 7-inch slate called Nook Tablet.
It's due Nov. 17 or right around the time that Kindle Fire is expected to reach consumers. Barnes & Noble begins taking pre-orders today. While I'll reserve judgment until I've had a chance to do a full hands-on review of both Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire, Amazon is going to have a battle on its hands.
Indeed, I was treated to a private early preview of Nook Tablet and I generally liked what I saw. Nook Tablet will cost $249, $50 higher than the $199 sweet spot that Amazon is charging for Fire. Nook Tablet looks a lot like the Nook Color "reader tablet" that came before it and that Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch says has sold in the "millions.' Nook Color stays in the lineup: Barnes & Noble is dropping the price on it from $249 to $199.
The addition of high definition streaming is what mostly distinguishes Nook Tablet from its predecessor. "What we set out to do here was create the best portable 7-inch media tablet. It is an evolution of Nook Color and a revolution in the 7-inch media category," Lynch says.
Barnes & Noble spent what it says is a ton of money developing a rich, highly readable display with a steep viewing angle and minimal glare. Its 1024 by 600 screen resolution matches the resolution of Kindle Fire.
Nook Tablet weighs 14.1 ounces or about 0.5 ounces lighter than Fire. It can be stuffed into a coat pocket. Inside is a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. That's double the amount of internal storage offered by its Amazon rival, plus you can expand Nook Tablet's memory via a micro SD memory card slot. Of course, Amazon is stressing "cloud" storage with Fire, and the ability to back up everything you buy through Amazon online, part of an integrated end-to-end solution.
During my sneak peek I saw how fast you can move on Nook Tablet from app to app or from one page to another in an interactive book or magazine. With Fire, Amazon has been touting a speedy browser called Silk.
To help you fly through the contents on the new Nook, you can tap the screen to summon a slider that makes it to jump to any page. Across the home screen, you get one-click access to books, newsstand, video, music and apps. On the content side, Lynch says Barnes & Noble will offer more of the top 100 magazines for subscription and download than any other newsstand service. Overall, the company has more than 250 periodicals on the Nook platform, many with interactive features. "We sell more (physical) magazines in our bookstores than virtually any other retailer—us and Walmart are the number one and number two seller. We've had longstanding relationships with these guys for years. Because of the success of the Nook Color they want in on this."
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