Everything you need to know about Noble Nook tablet

It is raining tablets. After Amazon threw its hat in the ring with its affordable ’Kindle Fire’, eBook giant Barnes and Noble has come up with its own tablet called the Nook. The Nook tablet follows the release of the Nook color e-reader, which competes Amazon’s original kindle.

The tablet is designed to compete alongside many of the world’s leading tablets such as the iPad. So what does the Nook tablet have on offer?

Lets have a look.

The base model of the Nook tablet is priced at $249 (Rs.12,500), making it a little short of Kindle Fire’s $199 (Rs.10,000) price tag. It comes equipped with a 1 GHz dual-core processor along with 1GB RAM.

The tablet offers a 7-inch screen with a 1024 x 600p ISP display. Unlike the iPad, it is a Wi-Fi only tablet. Although the device lacks a front-facing camera, it comes with an in-built microphone along with a voice-recording feature. One can also hear audiobooks using the ‘books on tape’ feature. It runs on Android 2.3-Gingerbread OS.

One of the impressive features of the tablet is the 16 GB inbuilt memory along with 32 GB MicroSD support.

The Nook tablet offers free access to the company's large library, which offers around 2 million titles. Along with that, it will offer eMagazines, eNewspapers among others.

The Nook offers an impressive 9 hours of video playback and 11.5 hours of battery life. The makers claim that its battery would last more than competitor Kindle Fire.

The device would come pre-loaded with apps such as Netflix, Pandora, Hulu amongst others. Barnes and Noble would offer games like Angry Birds Rio, Seasons etc. According to their press release, the company is working on making thousands of other apps available by this holiday season (i.e. December-January).

One drawback of the tablet is that it lacks access to the Google Android market, just like its predecessor, the Nook color.

While the tablet is a good competitor for the Kindle Fire, it lacks that iPad goodness and is more of a mid-range tablet. We would recommend the Nook tablet if you are an ardent reader and like to read eBooks.

The pre-orders for this device are open. It is expected to hit the stores on November 17.

No word about its Indian arrival date or price yet.