Barnes And Noble Unveils $50 NOOK Tablet 7 To Extinguish Amazon’s Fire

by Brandon Hill — Wednesday, November 16, 2016, 04:52 PM EDT

In late October, we got our fist peek at a new tablet from Barnes & Noble that is destined to take on the budget Amazon Fire. The tablet broke cover via an FCC filing, but now it has been officially unveiled.

The device, called the NOOK Tablet 7, features — you guessed it — a 7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1024x600 (171 ppi). 8GB of storage is onboard, although a microSD slot can accommodate another 128GB for your media needs. Other hardware features include dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n wireless, micro USB 2.0 connectivity, 3.5mm headphone jack, 5MP rear camera and a 2MP front-facing camera.

Barnes & Noble hasn’t officially outed the processor that is running the show, but there’s reportedly a MediaTek MT8163 SoC paired with a Mali-T720 GPU under the hood. The onboard 3,000 mAh battery is good enough for 7 hours of battery life. The NOOK Tablet 7 runs Android and thankfully includes full access to the Google Play Store (something that the Amazon Fire can’t claim with FireOS, a forked version of Android).

Barnes & Noble is taking pre-orders for the NOOK 7 Tablet right now for $49.99, and the device will actually be available on November 25^th. Given that its specs match up pretty favorably to the 7-inch Amazon Fire, which is also priced at $49.99, we could see both tablets vying for the attention of bargain shoppers this holiday season.

Amazon definitely has name recognition with its Fire, but you can’t easily dismiss the appeal of the NOOK Tablet 7 having full access to the Google Play Store.

Tags: Amazon, barnes--noble, nook tablet 7

Brandon Hill

Brandon received his first PC, an IBM Aptiva 310, in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. He cut his teeth on computer building/repair working at a mom and pop computer shop as a plucky teen in the mid 90s and went on to join AnandTech as the Senior News Editor in 1999. Brandon would later help to form DailyTech where he served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008 until 2014. Brandon is a tech geek at heart, and family members always know where to turn when they need free tech support. When he isn’t writing about the tech hardware or studying up on the latest in mobile gadgets, you’ll find him browsing forums that cater to his long-running passion: automobiles.

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