Have you heard about the new Barnes and Noble's NOOK Tablet, and would you buy it?
Barnes & Noble plans to announce on Monday a $249 Nook Tablet with double the memory and storage of the coming $199 Kindle Fire from Amazon.com. In many ways, the Nook Tablet is similar to the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire, including a 1024 x 600 touch screen.
The Nook Tablet will have 1GB of RAM, up from the 512MB in both of the other devices. The Nook Tablet will also have 16GB of internal storage, plus a 32GB expandable SD card, up from the Fire's and Color's 8GB of internal storage.
Processing speed is one of the other main distinctions. The Nook Tablet's processing speed, on paper, is the fastest of the three, and it features a 1.2 GHz dual-core OMAP4 chip. Compare that to a 1 GHz dual-core processor in the Kindle Fire and a single-core processor in the Nook Color.
Read about the Nook Tablet vs. Kindle Fire here: http://www.engadget.com/photos/bandn-nook-tablet-leak/#4582450
I dunno, as with anything from video game consoles to even blu-ray or hd-dvd, its all the content and the Kindle Fire got it beat. Hands down.
It's great that there will be another mainstream cheap tablet option, but I think BN really needed to match Amazon on the price. They are already playing catch up to Amazon with the Kindle. If the HP Touchpad stuff taught us anything it's that people will buy it if it's cheap enough. Is $249 cheap enough? Maybe for some, but with Amazon's Prime offerings, I think they are already in the front seat when it comes to capturing the cheap tablet market.
Sounds great to me. Amazon usually has the newer hardware so I usually say go with that, but the nooks always run seem able to run android, so I would definitely choose the nook just for the likelihood of it being able to be hacked to run stock android.
@90mcg112: Just how much do you think double the RAM, twice the internal storage, and a 32GB slot are worth?
@misterron: What I think the benefits in hardware are worth and what the average consumer who will purchase the tablet thinks it is worth are two much different questions. I know that the value is there in the improved hardware specs, but do you really believe that most people who will buy these will look at much more than the price between the two tablets? Hardware spec conscious consumers are outnumbered by price conscious consumers probably 3:1, 5:1, 10:1?
If there's a root option for it, I guess that will open it up some and bring it up on competitive-ness. But judging from the Nook Color, B&N will have it too locked down by default and they don't have quite the ecosystem of apps and content that Amazon will have for the Kindle.
TL;DR - tech kiddies: nook, mainstream: kindle.
@90mcg112: And just where did you get that info? Comparisons of 3:1 or any other odds without proof are not valid! That's just a guess on your part. There are probably more tech savvy persons or those who check into electronics than you think.
@misterron: I think it's actually a balancing act. When I shop for electronics I am weighing higher capacity versus lower price, and I try to evaluate exactly what capacity I actually need for the tool I am buying, and look for the least expensive best quality tool meeting those specs. I'd imagine most people take a similar approach. So it's really a question of how many people need the extra RAM, storage and slot, and how many are going to select the machine with the smaller capacity but the bigger environment. Personally, I am looking for a tablet PC, so if I were going to buy one I'd want the Nook. But if I wanted a reader, I'd probably look at the Kindle.
@moondrake: We're basically on the same page now.
I think Barnes & Noble's big mistake in all this isn't the price of the Nook Tablet ($250 seems justified), but not cutting the price of the Nook Color further.
Dropping the price of the Nook Color only to $199 basically prices it out of the market. The Fire is newer, more powerful, and offers a full app store for the exact same price. The only thing the Color has going for it is an SD card slot.
They should have marked it down to $150, which would make it an attractive upgrade option for consumers already considering a lower end e-reader. Right now it's in no-man's land.
@misterron: Calm down there, guy. I'm not proving a theorem or anything, I'm not going to pull market research data out of a hat or anything to cite my made up numbers. It's just speculation. I'm agreeing with you re value, but I think you overestimate the tech-savvy of the average consumer - by a lot. That's all. Merry Wooting.
I won't buy one until it is rooted and stock Android is on it. CyanogenMod did great things for the original Nook Color and hopefully it will be the same for the Nook Tablet.
You really have to own a Nook to aprriciate what it does, my nook color runs at 1.2 ghz, all android apps and market, it will blow away an ipad. It also has 8gb internal memory plus sd card slot. I run Kindle and B&N book reader. I got all this for $160 on Woot Deals. Thats why they call the Nook "the little tablet that could".
@housry23: Agree, and you can get the nook color for $149 from buy.com link in deals.woot.com right now. With CM7, which is pretty easy to install on the nook color, it'll run any common android apps. It streams netflix w/no problems, plays any 2d games/apps very well. I do wish it had a mic+camera, but for $150, it's a great deal.
@portezbie: "Amazon usually has the newer hardware"
Not these days. B&N offered the Nook Color a full year before Amazon got Fire out the door, and B&N easily beat Amazon to market with the concept behind the Simple Touch Reader too.
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