B&N Launches the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1
As predicted by this blogger a couple weeks ago, Barnes & Noble officially launched the 10″ version of their co-branded Galaxy Tab 4 Nook. The new Android tablet is available today in B&N stores and on Nook.com, where it is selling for a retail of $299.
According to the specs B&N posted on the Nook developer pages and then confirmed on the product listing for the new tablet, the co-branded Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook 10.1 runs Samsung’s flavor of Android 4.4 KitKat on a quad-core 1.2GHz Marvell CPU with 1.5GB RAM and 16GB internal storage.
This tablet has a 10.1″ display has a screen resolution of 1,280 x 800, and it also has Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, a pair of cameras (1.3MP and 3MP), and a microSD card slot. Weighing in at 487 grams, the new Tab Nook measure 8mm thin and has a 6.8Ah battery which is specced for 10 hours of web browsing.
I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on one of the 10″ Tab Nooks yet, but its smaller sibling is in all the important ways a Samsung Galaxy Tab, with additional Nook software. That model launched just over 2 months ago.
I am pointing out the close similarity between the Samsung branded unit and the co-branded unit because the high retail price offers a strong incentive to shop around. Amazon, for example, is selling the Samsung galaxy Tab 4 10.1 for $279 today. That is $20 you can spend elsewhere.
To be fair, B&N is boasting that their 10″ tablet comes with $200 in content, but Samsung makes a similar claim ($300 in products and services, in fact). What’s more, much of the dollar value of what B&N is giving away comes in the form of 3 single tv episodes and a double handful of single magazine issues.
Given the tight price competition in the larger tablet market, I have to wonder if B&N may have made a mistake in taking on a 10″ tablet in addition to the 7″ Galaxy Tab 4 Nook. B&N is committed to selling a million of the co-branded tablets, but I don’t think savvy shoppers will be buying very many.
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