While the Nook Color could be considered a tablet, according to the boys at Barnes & Nobles, the Nook Tablet is the company’s first official tablet. Coming hot on the heels of Amazon’s Kindle Fire announcement, Barnes & Nobles hopes the Nook Color will better position them to compete with the likes of Amazon. That being said, the Nook Tablet comes in at $50 above that of the Kindle Fire, but with some extras to boot, so it may be justified.  Read on to learn where to buy the Nook Tablet for the best value, you may have more options than you realize.

Design and Features

The Nook Tablet is powered by a dual-core TI OMAP4 processor with dedicated GPU as well as 1GB of RAM and 16GB of internal memory. There is a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 32GB. The 7-inch screen carries 600 x 1024 pixels with 169ppi and multi-touch support.

The only other features here are an accelerometer and Android 2.3.4 running underneath a highly customized skin.

Overall, we really do like the feel of the Nook Tablet. While not too heavy in the hands, it is solid enough to reflect the R&D that has gone into this tablet. Other than the power, volume and Nook buttons the device is clean with speakers located on the backside of the tablet. Unfortunately, there are no cameras so video calling is going to be a no show unless you are satisfied with people not being able to see your face.

Performance

For a tablet that costs $250 without any sort of contract commitment, we have to say, we were surprised at the performance. The Nook Tablet is great at three things mainly, playing multimedia, reading and of course browsing the web.

Starting with reading, we will warn that extended reading times will cause eye fatigue. If you need a dedicated eReader only, the Nook Tablet is not for you. This device is geared more towards the person who reads more magazines and surfs the web more than they  read.

Speaking of web surfing, the browser is decent and for the most part we had no trouble with Flash content. Every once in a while we did notice a few hiccups in performance, but it wasn’t that frustrating, and frankly, with a price point as low as the Nook Tablet, we cannot really complain.

Like mentioned before, the Nook Tablet runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread. You wouldn’t be able to tell however if some of the apps in the Nook store didn’t look familiar. The Nook Tablet does not have access to the Android Market, and after talking to Nook sales individuals, I was told the reason for this was because all the apps on the Nook Store have been tested to work with the device.

The Nook Tablet does not carry 3G options, but the Wi-Fi option allows you to connect to free public Wi-Fi as well as syncing with the computer when needed. Speaking of syncing, we were slightly disappointed that even though the Nook Tablet has 16GB of storage, only 1GB of that available storage is for content not purchased from the Nook Store. Thankfully, you can always stick a 32GB microSD card to hold your excess content.  Expandable storage is a feature that is not available on many of the higher priced tablets, providing even more incentive to learn where to purchase the Nook Tablet.

Video playback is a strong point of the Nook Tablet and in our tests it beat the Kindle Fire. The difference between video qualities was not very noticeable, but still noticeable enough to warrant points awarded to the Nook Tablet. If you’re into mobile gaming, the Nook Tablet has you covered which such titles as Angry Birds, Plants vs. Zombies and others. We tried a couple and never noticed any lag with the games. In fact, the only time we noticed lag with the software was during navigation around the menus itself. This could be attributed to the heavily skinned user experience which does put a load on the processor.

Conclusion

The Nook Tablet is not the tablet for everyone. However, for those looking for a decent tablet with strong multimedia focus and a price point that will not break the bank account, the Nook Tablet is an excellent choice. Is the $50 premium over the Kindle Fire justified? We’d say yes seeing video quality is better here, the processor more powerful, and the memory larger.  We definitely recommend that you take into consideration our information on where to purchase Nook Tablet.