Review: Nook Tablet

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In the book of Tablets, it was written that Apple begat the iPad, the Amazon begat the Kindle and finally Barnes & Noble begat the Nook. And it was good. This article reviews the Nook's newest descendant, the Nook Tablet.

Since the beginning, when Barnes & Noble threw their hat into the ring with their tablet, a lot of things have changed. Steve Jobs has died, bookstores have moved further down the endangered species list and the economy is still in the toilet. However, there is hope. Bloated prices and begun to fall as technology giants looking to keep their profit margins intact have found ways to produce cheaper products that the masses can afford. And one of the newest additions to that race is the Nook Tablet, successor to last year’s Nook Color.

Design

If you’ve ever seen the Nook Color, then you’ve pretty much seen the Nook Tablet. While B&N subbed out the black borders for a silverish grey, the overall design is largely the same. But that’s not a bad thing. Beyond looking good, the Tablet, despite being made mostly of plastic, still feels very solid in hand. I didn’t think twice about just tossing it in my laptop bag without a cover.

Exactly one year ago, Barnes & Noble made an interesting move, one no other company in the tech industry had yet been bold enough to make: it released the Nook Color for just $249.99. The 7-inch Color was positioned as an alternative to E Ink e-readers; it was a bit more expensive than the traditional Nook, but you could reach out and touch the screen, enjoy rich color publications and books, and surf the web in the Android-based browser. It was a fairly big hit, but even more interesting was that, without the assistance of B&N, the Color became an even bigger hit among techies — many of them turned it into a cheap tablet by rooting it and loading it up with Android apps.

The Nook Tablet is the realization of the vision those techies had for the original Color. It’s a real tablet, so much so that B&N even put it in the name. With a new dual-core processor, 16 GB of memory, improved app store, and a few more multimedia features, this year Barnes & Noble is hoping that the Tablet can capture the hearts of those looking for an iPad alternative that’s more than just a color e-reader. But will it? We’re not talking about a holiday season like last year’s, where Android tablets were still in hiding and Amazon wasn’t on the scene.

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