Nook vs. Kindle

Barnes & Noble hopes its revamped line of Nook devices will blunt the impact of Amazon’s own updated Kindle e-readers.

The Nook Tablet is the vanguard of Barnes & Noble’s Amazon-blunting efforts. The 7-inch tablet runs Android’s Gingerbread build and will, in addition to displaying static content like e-books, let the user watch movies.

The Nook Tablet bears a close resemblance to Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color device, released in 2010.

Barnes & Noble claims the Nook Tablet will offer nine hours’ worth of video playback on a single battery charge, or 11.5 hours of e-reading.

To build audiences in specific niches, Barnes & Noble has loaded the Nook Tablet with features such as Read and Record, designed to allow parents and others to vocally record reading a children’s book and play it back.

Whereas Amazon made the executive decision to offer video and music content through its online store, Barnes & Noble opted to partner with Pandora and other companies to provide streaming content, rather than build its own marketplace for those products. It also partnered with companies like Marvel for text offerings (in Marvel’s case, comics).

In addition to the Nook Tablet, Barnes & Noble revamped its whole Nook line (specifically, the Nook Simple Touch grayscale e-reader and last year’s Nook Color) with lower price points and updated software.

Unlike Amazon, which offers a wide selection of Android apps through its branded store, Barnes & Noble will not include full access to the Android Marketplace with the Nook Tablet.

The Nook Tablet weighs under a pound and fits comfortably in the hand.

The Nook Tablet is powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM.

The Nook Tablet offers 16GB of storage, meaning that users don’t necessarily need to rely as much on streaming content.

Barnes & Noble claims the device’s IPS-laminated screen reduces glare and makes e-reading (and viewing) easier.