From being the leading U.S. bookseller to becoming one of the first e-book reader developers, Barnes & Noble has done it all. Just like Amazon’s Kindle Readers and Kindle Fire tablet, Barnes And Noble e-Readers and Tablets provides a comfortable e-book reading experience. The Barnes And Noble Nook e-reader range was introduced in 2010 and has since grown into a more interactive tablet range. Evolving from the 1st edition of Nook, to “Nook Simple Touch” and “Nook Color”, the Barnes and Noble e-reader has reached its fourth generation in the form of the Nook Tablet. The “Nook Tablet” is available with 8GB and 16GB internal memory and provides the option of memory extension via MicroSD card.
This 8 inch tablet has a 7-inch VividView Color Touchscreen, for convenient viewing of books, newspapers, magazines and children’s picture books. Furthermore, users can enjoy Hulu, Netflix, Pandora and other services to watch media content on the Nook Tablet. Nook Tablets provide users with the utility to connect to the Barnes And Noble e-stores, to read and download e-books, play games and sideload apps. Let’s explore some of the major features of this tablet, followed by its technical specifications.
Video Streaming, Browsing And E-Book Reading
Nook Tablet has been designed for smoother video streaming, quicker book availability, (books can be acquired in under 10 seconds) and faster browsing. Furthermore, it enables quicker switching between, books, games and movies. The Nook Tablet provides access to over 2.5 million books, magazines, comics and children’s books.
A New Story Book Reading Experience
When Barnes And Noble introduced their Nook tablet range a few years ago, they revolutionized the e-book reading experience. For example, now parents can not only read midnight story books to their children but also play them with sound and effect via a Nook tablet. A few of the children’s books available for the Nook Tablet come with interactive animations and provide the user with the utility to get the story read by the Nook Reader. These stories are pre-recorded in voices from professional actors to give children a real time experience of a book being read out to them. This can be an easy replacement for bed time stories, as parents can simply let the Nook Tablet to read out the story to children for them.
Comic Book Reading And Graphic Quality
An interesting advantage of the Nook tablet is for comic book readers who can read popular comics, including a large number of Marvel novels, with vivid colors and high quality graphics.
Nook Tablet Battery Life
The Nook Tablet has a battery life of for 11.5 hours, which is reduced to 9 hours for videos. This is enough to watch 5 movies. Considering the battery life of other more resource intensive tablets, this does not seem to be a bad deal. However, this is less movie time and more book time as compared to Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, which provides up to 8 hours of continuous reading and 7.5 hours of video playback time.
Nook Apps And Games
The Nook Tablet also provides a number of apps and games. As it is an Android based tablet, you can run a number of Android games and applications, such as “Angry Birds”. Having said that the application collection and quality when compared to more high end tablets, might not be as good. Nonetheless, there are a few methods that you can use to side load Google Play (Android Market) apps on Nook. 
Nook Tablet Technical Specifications
Dimensions: Length 8.1 inches, Width 5 inches
Weight: 400 grams
Processor: 1 GHz Dual Core( Ti OMAP 4430)
GPU: POWERVR SGX540
Operating System: Android 2.3
Battery Time: Approximately 11.5 hours of reading or 9 hours of video playback, without the need to recharge.
Display
- Screen Type: Color Touchscreen with more than 16 million colors and an IPS2 display
- Screen Resolution: 1024 X 600
- Size: 7-inch VividView
Memory
- RAM: 1 GB for 16GB Nook Tablet model and 512 MB for 8GB model.
- Internal Storage: 16GB and 8GB storage options
- Extendable Storage: Yes, up to 32GB via microSDHC
Camera: No
Video:
- Video Hardware Scaling: 420p, 720p and 1080p
- Supported Video Formats: 3GP, 3G2, MP4 and FLV
- Supported Video Codecs: H.263 and H.264, xVID and MPEG-4 (Both simple and advanced).
Sound And Audio:
- Audio Jack: 3.5mm
- Speakers: Single/Mono
- Microphone: Yes
- Supported Audio Formats: SWF, WAV, OGG, ACC, 3GP, 3G2, AMR, FLV, MP4, MP3, MID, XMF, MXMF, RTTL, OTA and IMY.
- Supported Audio Codecs: AAC, AMR, MP3, AAC+, MIDI and LPCM
Sensors:
- Accelerometer
Connectivity
- USB – Micro Version 2.0, High-speed
- Wi-Fi Connectivity
