Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet 7"

The Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet 7" is an Android slate that only costs $49. Performance isn't great, but you get in-store support.

Back

There's a Nook logo on the soft-touch back panel. The tablet weighs eight ounces, so it's relatively comfortable to hold.

Camera

The 2-megapixel camera on the back is mostly useless.

MicroSD Card Slot

The microSD card slot is very useful: It lets you increase available storage from the 12GB of built-in usable storage to more than 256GB.

Top

The tablet charges with a standard micro USB charger and has a 3.5mm headset jack.

Right

The volume buttons and power button are on the right side.

Reading

The tablet works decently well as a color ebook reader.

Comics

The 7-inch, 1,024-by-600 screen is just a little too small for comics. I'd recommend the 10.1-inch Nook for that.

Nook vs. Fire

Here's the 7-inch Nook tablet (left) versus the 8-inch Amazon Fire, which we like a little better. The Nook's advantage is that it can run competing reading apps thanks to the Google Play store.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet 7"