Last week, Barnes & Noble announced the launch of a new NOOK tablet in time for the holiday season. The NOOK Tablet 7 is the company’s first own manufactured slate in almost four years and has already gone on sale a day after Thanksgiving (November 25th) in the US.
Priced at $49.99, the entry-level NOOK Tablet 7 takes on the similarly priced Amazon Fire tablet and boots Android OS. It sports a 7-inch display with 1024 x 600 pixels, 1GB of RAM and 8GB built-in storage space. For additional storage space, there is microSD card slot for expansion up to 128GB.
On the inside, it relies on a Quad-core MediaTek MT8163 ARM Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-M720 MP2 GPU and backed by a 3000mAh battery. It also has a front 2MP camera, rear 5MP camera, a micro USB 2.0 port, Dual Band 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, 3.5mm headset jack and mono speaker.
Unlike the Amazon Fire Tablet, the B&N NOOK Tablet 7 comes pre-loaded with various Google apps such as Google Maps, Google Play Store, Chrome web browser and Google Search. It also ships with the company’s apps such as Readouts feature, NOOK software for eBooks, periodicals, and audiobooks.
Back in 2013, Barnes and Noble spun-off its tablet division (NOOK) and instead chose to partner with Samsung to sell co-branded NOOK tablets the following year (2014).
