Barnes & Noble Nook HD And Nook HD+ Tablets Coming To The UK

Barnes & Noble is set to take the fight to Google and Amazon this Christmas with the launch of its Nook HD and Nook HD+ Android  tablets.

The seven-inch Barnes & Noble Nook HD and the nine-inch Nook HD plus are priced from £159 and £229 respectively, with pre-orders beginning in October.

Users will have access to a variety of Barnes & Noble content, including the US retailer’s catalogue of books, applications, magazines and newspapers as well as the newly-launched Nook Video store.

Barnes & Noble says that its new products will offer an unmatched reading experience, fast browsing and support for email services, including Microsoft Exchange.

Barnes & Noble Nook HD

The Nook HD is aimed firmly at competing with the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HD and claims to boast the highest high-definition resolution ever seen on a seven-inch tablet. It boasts a display capable of a 1440 x 900 resolution, 720p video playback and showing 243 pixels per inch – 25 percent more than Amazon’s rival tablet.

Similar to Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, the tablets run a customised version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich version) with Barnes & Noble’s own store.

The comapny claims the Nook has up to 80 percent faster graphics processing power than the Amazon rival, and is backed up with a 1.3GHz dual core processor and 1GB of RAM. The Nook HD’s list of promises extends to portability, vowing to be the most lightweight tablet of its size ever released.

The Nook HD+ is slightly larger at nine inches and has a full 1080p HD screen capable of a 1920 x 1820 resolution and 256 pixels per inch. At 515 grams, it is also the lightest full HD tablet ever and is powered by a 1.5GHz dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM. It will retail for £229 for the 16GB model and £269 for the 32GB version. Storage on both the Nook HD and Nook HD + can be expanded by up to 64GB via a Micro SD slot.

“With the combination of the highest resolution screen, lightest weight and expansive access to content rendered in a digital quality never before seen, Nook HD is the world’s best 7-inch media tablet,” said William J. Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. ““We designed our larger format tablet Nook HD+, because we think there’s big demand from customers for a super-light, extremely high quality 9-inch tablet, at half the price of the iPad.

“Both our 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch Nook HD+ 4 deliver an exceptional customer experience and we enthusiastically encourage customers to go to nook.com and learn more about them.”

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