Nook Tablet 8GB: Barnes & Noble Launches $199 Tablet, Slashes Nook Color Price Tag

At the same time that major bookseller Barnes & Noble announced a drop in its quarterly net income, the company announced a new version of its Nook Tablet eReader device.

According to a company press release issued on February 21, the new 8GB Nook Tablet will be sold at $199, $50 cheaper than its 16GB predecessor. The new Nook's price tag matches its direct competitor, Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet.

In addition to 512MB of RAM, a 1GHz dual-core processor fit for video-streaming and web-browsing, and an estimated 11.5-hour battery life (reading time), Engadget reports that the 8GB Nook Tablet will offer a microSD slot to make up for the loss of 8GB of on-board storage, a feature the Kindle Fire lacks.

With a new price and competitive specs, Barnes & Noble's newest Nook Tablet may fulfill the company's hopes to make it an even better rival against Amazon's Kindle Fire, which, CNET reports, may be nipping at the iPad's heels in the tablet market.

Barnes & Noble has also slashed the price of its Nook Color from $199 to $169. According to SlashGear, with these cheaper eReader and tablet offerings, the company appears to be bolstering its digital downloads and hardware sales. Back in January, B&N CEO William Lynch told the AP in an interview that the company was considering spinning off the eBook business from the traditional book-selling business. "We want to unlock value and shine a bright light on that business," Lynch said, per the AP.

While the company's most recent earnings, posted on Tuesday, reported a 14-percent drop in net income, revenue from both its eReaders and its digital offerings rose 38 percent, while traditional book sales rose a mere 4 percent in comparison.

You can purchase the new $199 Nook Tablet today on Barnes & Noble's website or through other retailers in coming weeks.

Will you take advantage of the tablet's cheaper price?

Comments

[Erica Confer]

08:34 AM on 02/22/2012

JUST received my kindle fire in the mail 3 days ago now so....yeah. If i had known then yeah I would have considered it. It seems like a good deal.

[Ampoliros]

12:27 PM on 02/22/2012

I do believe that you still have time to return the Fire. You can even play around with it for a few more days and check it out. You might even head down to your local BN and play around with the new tablet and see which you like better.

[ginpowell]

08:05 AM on 02/22/2012

big fat competition for kindle fire, SD card, hmmmm

[brushfinch]

07:17 AM on 02/22/2012

Where is it made? What are the working conditions of the people who make them?

[AllegroTroppo]

08:09 AM on 02/22/2012

It's made by vegan gender- bias-free organic collective in Oregon forest.

[Ampoliros]

12:28 PM on 02/22/2012

Same as any tablet maker. More than likely Foxconn or its compatriots.

[Pali Dumtur]

05:34 AM on 02/22/2012

It's not sold in Europe.

[AllegroTroppo]

08:13 AM on 02/22/2012

Ever heard of ebay?

[Pali Dumtur]

08:23 AM on 02/22/2012

Ever heard of a rip-off?
16GB = 350$

No thanks :D

[l3ama205]

04:59 AM on 02/22/2012

Running cm7 on a nookcolor is amazing !

[FireWater83]

04:38 AM on 02/22/2012

Outta control.

[CabCurious]

04:34 AM on 02/22/2012

Can somebody explain rooting and what it enables? :)

[l3ama205]

04:59 AM on 02/22/2012

google is your friend!~

[dorree1122]

06:21 AM on 02/22/2012

why be so condescending?

[CabCurious]

10:23 AM on 02/22/2012

And apparently google is a better friend than you. :)

[ginpowell]

08:04 AM on 02/22/2012

you can fool around in the guts of the software/firmware and trick it out a bit. be careful...

[CabCurious]

04:29 AM on 02/22/2012

As long as the Kindle and Nook are focused on ebooks and exclusive media contracts with their mother companies, I don't see why people buy them.

These are $50-75 eReaders, in my mind. Not tablets.

As far as I can tell, these are a long ways from being proper tablets. And as long as I see them pushing specific streaming services for media, I am not buying.

[l3ama205]

05:00 AM on 02/22/2012

running android apps with cm7,is well worth the buy myfriend!

[CabCurious]

11:39 AM on 02/22/2012

I thought they disabled the ability to root it?

[ginpowell]

08:07 AM on 02/22/2012

kindle fire awesome for the average user who wants books, tons of apps, movies etc. the price point is great, really cannot be beat. why pay 450/500 or more for a samsung or other high priced when you will not use it?

[CabCurious]

11:30 AM on 02/22/2012

Not use it?

I do not understand this "average user" who wants a half-baked tablet that gives you PROPRIETARY media services and requires EXTRA network payments, but without all the full apps and features of a real tablet or netbook.

Makes no sense at all, to me.

To me, the price point belongs at like $75-100 for these glorified ipods.

[Cherry Davis]

02:52 AM on 02/22/2012

I have the Nook Color and find with the internal memory has plenty of room for the books I've ordered. I normally only need wifi when checking emails and I use my cell phone for that.

[AllegroTroppo]

12:33 PM on 02/22/2012

You could've saved $100 and bought Nook Touch, a far better book- reading device.

[mjredder]

12:38 AM on 02/22/2012

If you can't cut the price by 1/5 without cutting the memory by 1/2..... FAIL!

[Tmboy]

01:34 AM on 02/22/2012

the memory is not all the make the price you know? Amazon's fire is selling for LESS that it costs to make. i wouldn't be surprised if B&N is doing the same thing here.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

02:01 AM on 02/22/2012

The RAM is the same on both models and Android doesn't really need much (don't think of it as Win 7 or OSX, it's Linux after all...) Flash memory is pretty much irrelevant when you have a microSD slot. A 32 gb microSD card costs less than $50. 64 gb cards have recently hit the market. They're still expensive ($150+), but as they become more popular, the price will quickly shrink below $100. If your movies are smartly compressed, you can cram 40+ movies on a single 32 gb microSD.

[Ladyteguesian]

12:35 AM on 02/22/2012

I still prefer a book in my hands.

[frantaylor]

12:57 AM on 02/22/2012

Can you express your opinion like that with a book?

[Myrika]

01:27 AM on 02/22/2012

They're called Journals......

[Yank in France]

02:52 AM on 02/22/2012

Excellent point, fran!

[CabCurious]

04:24 AM on 02/22/2012

I doubt you would say that after having an iPad for a few months.

I'm not anti-book, but... there's a difference between preference and stubbornness. :)

[sunflwer1975]

12:09 AM on 02/22/2012

i'm just gonna get the $99 Nook and a Netbook... wont ever buy from Amazon.

[AllegroTroppo]

08:04 AM on 02/22/2012

Yep. Or from Apple.

[Lizzy28]

08:17 AM on 02/22/2012

Why?

[FanofPaine]

09:11 PM on 02/28/2012

I don't know that the working conditions for the employees of the Nook are any better, but there was a scathing article last year about the working conditions of Amazon employees.

[Drew DeFord]

11:53 PM on 02/21/2012

There is one piece of misinformation here: the original Nook Tablet already HAS a micro-SD slot. I own one; I should know, and it works just fine. So, paying $50 less is only losing you 8 gigs of internal storage, not gaining any expandability it didn't already have.

Kind of funny since the main selling point for me over the Kindle Fire was exactly that SD slot, heh.

[mjredder]

12:41 AM on 02/22/2012

I don't understand how expandable memory makes that much difference based on the current limitations of most micro-SD cards. I have a Kindle and a $2 micro-USB cord; I can link to my computer and upload anything I want to take with me. And with Amazon involved with the growing cloud storage movement, data cards of any type are destined for irrelevancy.

[frantaylor]

12:58 AM on 02/22/2012

"current limitations"??? Nook takes a 32 GIGABYTE memory card!

You can fit THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of books in 32 gigabytes!

[AllegroTroppo]

10:52 PM on 02/21/2012

I really enjoy my Nook Touch. but I always found these tablets and pads useless without a substantial cost of Net service. When I can get decent Net service for under $20, I ;get a tablet.
Until then I' stick to my far more useful laptop.

[Dameocrat]

12:15 AM on 02/22/2012

This is true. Another nice thing about a small laptop is that in my personal experience they are far more customizable. I can install different oses on them, and tweak them,, and the programs you can install dont violate your privacy as much. Tablets are very spyware friendly, and I am not sure why no one complains.

[mjredder]

12:42 AM on 02/22/2012

That's why the Kindle's lack of a camera is actually rather reassuring.

[Dameocrat]

12:17 AM on 02/22/2012

you can use the free wifi available at many cafes, and restaurants. Unless you root them they only download books anyway. Books dont take that long to download. Also there are wifi adapters available for dialup that you can buy on ebay.

[AllegroTroppo]

12:58 AM on 02/22/2012

As I said before without MOBILE net services these tablets are practically useless.
I have a great cable modem connection. On the go I use my cell phone Net connection and Laptop. To read I use Nook Touch.
This makes the tablet totally useless.

[BigHound1]

10:50 PM on 02/21/2012

I don't see why they waited Barnes & Nobles did not introduce both tablets for the holidays. The microSD would have generated a separation between them and the Amazon Fire. I actually purchased a Nook Tablet for a family member and it meets their need.

I actually have a more generic tablet that can utilize either Kindle or Barnes & Nobles e-books. More and more people will be purchasing tablets as a second computer for people on the go.

[ProudToBeVeryLiberal]

11:58 PM on 02/21/2012

Tablets are devices for media consumption, not good alternatives to laptops. Actual computing is still a challenge on a tablet, even for simple tasks like word processing and spreadsheets, especially if you are a touch typist capable of high wpm...

[mjredder]

12:43 AM on 02/22/2012

But speech-to-text will replace keyboards soon, or at least restrict them to the office and school computer labs where talking to your computer wouldn't be feasible.

[frantaylor]

03:38 AM on 02/22/2012

Bluetooth keyboards work just great with tablets