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Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet officially unveiled, pre-order now for $249

Product Launch by Dan Seifert on Monday November 07, 2011.

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Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet

At a press event in NYC this morning, Barnes & Noble took the wraps off of the latest member of the NOOK e-reader family, the NOOK Tablet. The NOOK Tablet builds upon last year's NOOK Color, and will go head to head with Amazon's upcoming Kindle Fire tablet.

Design-wise, the NOOK Tablet looks very familiar to the NOOK Color, as it has essentially the same body design. It is a 7-inch class tablet, and it has the same signature loop on the lower left corner as the NOOK Color. It is on the inside where the NOOK Tablet is different, however, as it is powered by a new dual-core 1GHz TI OMAP4 processor - a significant upgrade over the 800MHz single-core chip found in the NOOK Color. Joining the new processor is 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, along with a microSD card slot for expansion.

The tablet will have access to Barnes & Noble's NOOK Cloud online storage and, thanks to the new processor and RAM, the NOOK Tablet will be able to play back 1080p HD video content without any issues. The display has the same 600 x 1024 pixel resolution as the NOOK Color's display, and features the same IPS construction for superior viewing angles. The display is made with LG's Vivid View technology, a laminated, "no air gap" IPS type display. The tablet itself measures 206mm x 127mm x 12.2 (8.1in x 5in x 0.48in) and weighs 400g (14.1oz), 0.5mm thinner and 48g lighter than the NOOK Color. The built-in battery is said to offer 11.5 hours of reading time.

The NOOK Tablet features the latest version of Barnes & Noble's software interface on top of Android, and includes support for Netflix and Hulu Plus video streaming, and Pandora music. The Netflix integration is extensive, as recommendations are pushed right to the home screen of the device. Barnes & Noble claims to have 2.5 million e-books available to download and read on the NOOK Tablet, including thousands of kids books with interactive features and read along options. The NOOK Tablet will also have full-color comics from Marvel and over 100 magazine titles available on it.

Barnes & Noble will be selling the NOOK Tablet for $249 with units arriving in store "by the end of next week." Those interested in being the first to get one can place a pre-order online or in store today. The bookseller also announced a partnership with AT&T that offers NOOK Tablet owners free access to any AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot, even those not located within Barnes & Noble stores.