14 DAY TRIAL // Just the past week we shared with you a series of details regarding Barnes & Noble's upcoming Nook Tablet and now the company has finally made official the 7-inch device designed to counter Amazon's successful Kindle Fire.
On the outside, the Nook Tablet looks remarkably similar with the previous Nook Color as the two share the same chassis as well as the 7-inch VividView IPS color touchpanel with a 1024 x 600 screen resolution.
However, when taking a look at the insides of B&N's latest creation it becomes clear that the Nook Tablet is indeed a major change from its predecessor as it comes equipped with faster overall hardware.
The most important change is the move from a single-core TI OMAP 3621 processor clocked at just 800MHz paired with 512MB of RAM to a 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4 processor seconded by 1GB of memory.
That's more than double the compute capacity of the Nook Color, while also featuring 16GB on-board storage which can also be upgraded via a micro-SD card slot.
The rest of the specifications seem to be pretty much the same, but SlashGear reports that the Nook Tablet has shed some of the weight of the Nook Color as is .9 ounces lighter, but also .02 inches thinner.
In addition, Nook Tablet's multimedia capabilities were enhanced to support 1080p video decoding, while also coming with pre-installed with a series of multimedia apps such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, Rhapsody, MOG, and Grooveshark.
Pricing is set at $249 (180 EUR) in the US, so this will retail for $50 (36 EUR) more than its closest rival, the highly successful Amazon Kindle Fire.
Users should be able to place pre-orders for the Barnes & Noble ablet later today with shipping expected to begin on November 16.