Barnes & Noble announced its new Nook Tablet Monday and although it is a dead-ringer for last year's Nook Color, the combination of hardware and software enhancements will instantly make it one of the most impressive Android tablets on the market when it's released on Nov. 17.
After this morning's announcement, I was able to get some hands-on time with the device. The Nook Tablet is a speedy, well-designed tablet that could match up well against Amazon's Kindle Fire, set to be released on Nov. 15. I will need to see the two tablets side-by-side to make a real judgment, but I spent enough time with the new Barnes & Noble tablet to form some impressions.
If you judge this Nook by its cover, you'll have a tough time distinguishing it from the currently available Nook Color. The Nook Tablet's aluminum shell and the addition of an almost-invisible microphone are the only physical cues that this is a different device than the earlier ereader. It is a tad lighter, at 14.1 ounces, but even that is hard to detect.
Although this similarity in appearance is a little odd, the Nook Color's design is actually pretty elegant—and at least this way all the cases built for the Nook Color will fit the Tablet as well. Since the Nook Color is often rooted by users to run Google Android apps and function as a tablet, maybe it's not so surprising that Barnes & Noble decided to base its first official tablet on the design of a device many are turning into a de facto tablet.
As with the Nook Color, you can navigate the interface by tapping through menus and dragging icons, like apps and magazine covers, around the screen. The Nook button always brings up the home menu, but you can almost always get to your apps, your media, or your books with just a few taps. It is more user-friendly than stock Android, but of course you'll give up some flexibility there as well.
7-Inch IPS Screen
Barnes & Noble is making the case that the Nook Tablet's 7-inch screen is a key differentiator, and it is a strong one. The 1024-by-600 laminated, no-air IPS LCD is incredibly sharp. It has been a few weeks since I had hands-on time with the Kindle Fire, so it's hard to make direct comparisons. Still, I was able to watch streaming video that was sharp and smooth on the Nook Tablet. The device streams Netflix movies in 720p, which will disappoint some, but on a 7-inch screen, 720p is just fine.
Although I didn't do any formal performance testing, the device was very responsive when playing videos and navigating through interactive magazines. At least in part, this is because of some pretty robust specs. The Nook tablet has a dual-core CPU and double the memory of the Nook Color. I was able to scrub through pages of an interactive magazine as fast as I could turn the page, which is a good sign.
The device comes with 16GB of built-in storage, but you can add up to 32GB more via the SD slot. By comparison, the Kindle Fire will only have 8GB of onboard storage, and only 6GB of that will be accessible to the user. Those storage specs are likely part of the reason that the Nook Tablet is priced at $249 to the Kindle Fire's $199.
If you want to side-load a lot of your own video and music content, this storage advantage could be important. The device supports side-loading of video (MP4), audio (Non-DRM AAC, MP3, MP4), photo (JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP), and text (EPUB, PDF, DOC, TXT, DOCM, DOCX) files via USB.
Content Offerings
Barnes & Noble's approach to media differs from Apple's and Amazon's strategies. Apple and Amazon are using their tablets as a platform to sell their own media offerings. But other than books and magazines, Barnes & Noble doesn't have media offerings of its own. Instead, it has partnered with companies like Netflix and Hulu to deliver these services.
And they work pretty well. I was able to stream The Walking Dead over a relatively busy Wi-Fi network without any artifacts or video defects.
There is no 3G in the Nook tablet, but that won't be available in the Fire either. Evidently carriers don't want quite this much audio and video moving over their wireless networks. That or there is just no way to build it into a device that retails for $250.
When we get the Nook Tablet into the lab, one of our first orders of business will be to put Barnes & Noble's claims about battery life to the test. The company claims it can deliver 11 hours of reading time and eight to nine hours of video watching with the wireless turned off.
The Nook Tablet ships on Nov. 17 for $249. The Nook Color, meanwhile, will now sell for $199, a $50 price cut.
Is the Nook Tablet's added memory, "no-air" screen, and streamlined interface worth paying $50 more than you would for the Kindle Fire? We will have to get both devices in for a closer inspection to find out. Check back next week and find out what our testing says. Until then, check out the slideshow above.