knowledgeablesh: B&N launching Nook Tablet for $249 on November 16th, and we've got the dirty details

Thursday, November 3, 2011

B&N launching Nook Tablet for $249 on November 16th, and we've got the dirty details

Sitting down? Good. Come November 16th, Amazon's Kindle Fire will have company. We've wrapped our paws around a stash of documents confirming the impending launch of the first bona fide tablet in the Nook line, and lo and behold, the Nook Tablet will end up being a dead-ringer for the Nook Color that already exists. What we're looking at is a 7-inch VividView IPS color touchpanel with a 1024 x 600 screen resolution (that's 169 pixels per inch), a 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4 processor, 1GB of RAM, dimensions of 8.1- x 5- x 0.48-inches, 16GB of inbuilt storage, a microSD expansion slot, roughly eight hours of battery life with WiFi switched off (that sinks to four hours with videos playing back), 802.11b/g/n WiFi and support for a smorgasbord of file formats including ePUB, PDF, XLS, DOC, PPT, TXT, DOCM, Flash, JPG, MP3, MP4 and AAC.

Nook Color review

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What's looney is just how similar this thing is to the Nook Color, even in functionality; in fact, B&N simply says that it offers "everything the Nook Color [does] + the best in HD entertainment." We've also confirmed that it'll ship for $249 here in the States -- a full $50 more than Amazon's Kindle Fire. So, why does B&N think you'll pony up the extra? For one, the Nook Tablet has twice the RAM and twice the storage compared to its closest rival, while also being lighter and having access to over two million books, magazines and newspapers. So, what say you? You'll be able to pre-order your own on November 7th, and for those still dubious, in-store demonstrations will begin on the 15th.

Gallery: B&N Nook Tablet leak