Barnes & Noble has indeed returned in the tablet segment, with a brand new slate: Nook Tablet 10.1. It’s priced at $130 and it’s up for preorder right now, shipping from November 18th. B&N announced that the product will be on sale for $119 if you get the device between November 22nd and December 26th.
On paper it actually sounds like a pretty solid device, between the 1920 x 1200 pixel IPS display, 32 GB of storage and microSD card slot, it sounds pretty appealing. There’s an audio jack here, Google Play Store support and that’s sadly where it all ends. B&N wasn’t too keen on unveiling hardware specs, so we can’t quite judge the product fully. Nook Tablet 10.1 is made by a Chinese OEM called Jingwah Information Technology and B&N claims that it should offer up to 7 hours of battery life.
Other product pages even mention 8.5 hours of battery life, so the jury is still out on that one. No idea what CPU is here, or the RAM quantity or even the version of Android. B&N is also supposed to have tweaked the UI a lot in order to push forward its own book store, apps and content. What’s certain is that the device measures 0.4 inches in thickness, packs a microUSB port, 2 MP front and rear camera, plus WiFi 802.11 ac.
The unit has the same soft touch back cover as the previous NOOK models, with pogo pins on the side, which will hook up to a charging dock and an optional portable keyboard cover. B&N is also going to offer a cookbook bundle, that starts on November 22nd and offers the Nook Tablet 10.1 with a charging dock for $160 and $50 wroth of “Good Housekeeping” digital cookbooks.
