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New $50 Nook is basically a Kindle 7 -- but no need to sideload the Play Store
- Barnes & Noble just announced a brand new Nook 7-inch tablet.
- The ebook-focused tablet has all the primary specs of the Kindle 7, but also has access to the Google Play Store.
- The starting price for the full-color Nook tablet is just $50.
If you were thinking about buying an e-reader as a gift this year, you might want to consider the just-announced Nook 7-inch tablet from Barnes & Noble. The new Nook tablet has all the primary features present on a Kindle tablet, but with a very important added ability: full access to the Google Play Store.
While the range of Amazon Kindle tablets and e-readers are the go-to brand for many, the tablets are locked out of the Google Play Store, instead utilizing the far-more-limited Amazon Appstore. Assuming the Nook tablet isn’t bogged down with some sort of major problem or design flaw, the Nook pretty much automatically becomes the better buy based on Play Store access alone.
The Nook 7-inch tablet has an IPS display with a resolution of 600 x 1,024 — hardly crisp, but not terrible for a screen of this size. The Nook has 16GB of onboard storage which you can expand by up to 128GB with the built-in microSD slot. There’s also a micro-USB port at the bottom for charging and data transfer as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the front of the Nook is a VGA camera which will get you some very pixelated selfies or some low-quality video chatting, and on the rear is a 2MP camera which will deliver some slightly better photos. There’s a bottom-firing speaker, Wi-Fi connectivity, and Bluetooth, too.
All in all, the Nook has all the basic necessities of a tablet, albeit at the very, very low-end of the spectrum.
However, the low-quality specs become less of an issue when you learn the price: Barnes & Noble is asking only $50 for the new Nook 7-inch tablet.
For the sake of comparison, the Amazon Fire 7 tablet with only 8GB of storage also starts at $50 — but that includes the $25 discount for opting-in to Amazon Special Offers, which covers your tablet in advertisements. That $50 also, once again, gets you a tablet without access to the Play Store (assuming you don’t modify it with custom software).
The new Nook 7-inch tablet is available now from Barnes & Noble, and shipping is currently free. You can also buy the tablet in select Barnes & Noble stores across the country. Click the button below to get yours!