Today Barnes & Noble announced the upcoming release of a new Nook Tablet that’s basically a clone of the current $49 Fire tablet from Amazon.
The new Nook Tablet is not a Samsung-branded device like Barnes & Noble’s other tablets. Instead they went the cheaper route to get the price competitive with Amazon’s offerings.
The new Nook Tablet has mostly the same specs as the $49 Fire tablet.
Both have low resolution 7-inch IPS screens (1024 x 600) with 171 ppi.
Both have 8GB of internal storage space (although there’s a 16GB option for the Fire) and a microSD card slot for cards up to 128GB.
Battery life is rated at up to 7 hours for both tablets as well.
The Nook Tablet appears to have a couple of advantages, including dual-band Wi-Fi and higher MP cameras.
But in typical Barnes and Noble fashion they don’t post any detailed specs for the device so it’s hard-telling how it really compares to the $49 Fire tablet.
The product page doesn’t say anything about what processor it uses or the amount of RAM it comes with. Bluetooth isn’t mentioned anywhere, and it doesn’t say anything about having speakers or a microphone.
At least the press release gives a few extra details, like the fact that it has a quad-core processor and Bluetooth.
As far as software, the new Nook Tablet runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow and it comes with Google Play access. That’s another advantage over the Fire tablet, which has Amazon’s custom software that requires installing Google Play separately on your own.
The new Nook Tablet officially gets released on November 25, Black Friday. It’s available for pre-order now from B&N.com.
Toward 2017, why would anyone still release a tablet with only 8G storage? After system reserve, a user can only see about 4G of storage. It is hardly enough for basic functions.
Correct me if I am wrong: I thought Marshmallow allows SD partition to be used as internal storage, so that should make the 8GB internal storage a non-issue. Or am I wrong?
You are correct Sir:
https://liliputing.com/2015/10/android-6-0-can-treat-sd-cards-as-internal-storage-at-a-cost.html
with a few caveats…
What can a user do with just 8G of storage. Even if the tablet allow us to use an sd card, it is difficult to install apps in the sd card and before ejecting the card we would have to create a backup otherwise all the data will be lost.
Isn’t the basic function of this “Reading”? If you want apps and games and all the extras you would need the more expensive tablets. for someone who just whats the basics and reading this sounds perfect for the price.
Perfect for the price.
With SD card support you can get around almost all of the internal 8MB issues.
I don’t quite have the same setup, but I have a tablet with 16GB and SD support, and because I put all my movies, mp3s, books, magazines, and photos on an SD card, I’ve never had an issue.
Plus, like someone already said I think the target audience for this tablet are “readers”.
Even if the target audience are the readers, they could have double their sales by adding more RAM. But overall this tablet has a reasonable price and it could be useful for the students.
So if Samsung isn’t making the hardware, who made the hardware? Are they going back to who made the original Nook tablets? Looks like something I’d be interesting in my local Barnes and Noble. Not sure if I’ll purchase it though.
Notwithstanding the RAM concerns, my personal threshold for PPI is 212 for reading. I had the Fire 7 and it was too pixelated to enjoy for the font size I use. I’d recommend looking at one in the store to see if that is also something that will bother potential buyers. YMMV.