Barnes & Noble Nook Hits The Shelves to Fit A New Demographic
The Barnes & Noble Nook tablet. Remember that? It was B&N’s foray into e-readers and tablets, a market largely dominated by the Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad. While it put up a worthy fight, it could not overcome Amazon’s massive success with the Kindle. In 2014, B&N relegated tablet duties to Samsung that merely contained the Nook app.
Today Barnes & Noble announced a new $50 Nook tablet to take on Amazon’s Kindle Fire 7 tablet. The specs are:
- 1024 x 600 IPS display
- 8 GB of storage (expandable up to 128 GB via microSD card)
- 2MP front facing camera and 5MP rear camera
- Dual-band Wi-Fi
- Android 6.0 Marshmallow (sorry Nougat fans)
The specs aren’t mind blowing by any stretch, but for $50, it should compete nicely. Fortunately, the Google Play store is included on the Nook whereas on the Kindle, you’re restricted to the apps on Amazon’s Fire platform. It promises “up to 7 hours of reading, watching videos and web browsing”. Other B&N niceties include free Wi-Fi at Barnes & Noble stores, free Nook Cloud storage, and free in store support.
