14 DAY TRIAL // Manufactured by Barnes & Noble, the highly-acclaimed NOOK Color tablet will be available for $249 in both Staples stores and online starting May 1st.
The retailer has announced that the tablet will be introduced just in time for the Mother’s Day, Graduation and Father’s Day gift-giving season.
Out-of-the-box, the NOOK Color is intended to be a simple e-reader, but it is actually built on a basic Android mobile platform.
Those who were hoping for a cheaper Android 3.0 tablet can easily turn the NOOK Color into an expensive $500 Honeycomb tablet with a little tweaking. However, the procedure will void the tablet's warranty.
“We are thrilled to partner with Staples to offer our award-winning NOOK Color Reader’s Tablet, at only $249, the best value of any tablet on the market,” said Chris Peifer, vice president, digital business development at Barnes & Noble.
“NOOK Color is the perfect sleek, sophisticated and reading-centric tablet device for the mom, dad or grad who loves to read everything, surf the Web and listen to music.”
NOOK Color comes with a 7-inch VividView Color touchscreen with 16 million colors support and 1024 x 600 pixels resolution.
The tablet packs 8GB of internal memory, which can be further extended up to 32GB through the embedded microSD card slot.
It also comes with built-in Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity, as well as extra apps and services such as: Pandora internet radio, Chess and Sudoku games, Crossword Puzzles.
According to the manufacturer, NOOK Color users will have access to a vast and steady growing collection of more than 2 million digital books, more than 140 interactive, full-color magazines and major newspapers through the NOOK Bookstore.
Furthermore, users will be able to install additional popular apps compatible with NOOK Color, along with full-featured email and other highly requested features.
This is will be possible after Barnes & Noble will be releasing a major free software update for the tablet this spring.