Barnes and Noble has just unveiled a new 10.1 inch Android tablet that was designed by Lenovo. It is called the Nook 10 HD and it will be available in-store and online in early April 2021. It will initially retail for $129.99, which is a very solid price.
The Nook 10 HD features a 10.1 inch IPS display with an 85 percent screen-to-body ratio and a resolution of 1280 x 800 Pixels with 149 PPI and 400 nits. The tablet offers customers endless entertainment in one package with NOOK eBooks, digital newspapers and magazines, Google Play, Google Assistant, Kids Space from Google, which is a new kids mode featuring apps, books and videos.
Underneath the hood is an 2.3 GHZ octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage with the option to expand with a microSD card, allowing readers to build an extensive digital library with to 256 GB of additional storage. It includes a FM radio and comes fully equipped with 5 MP front and 8 MP rear cameras, Bluetooth 5.0 capability, USB-C and dual audio speakers powered by Dolby Atmos. A long-lasting battery for up to 10 hours of web browsing on a single charge and it is lightweight and weighs just 420 g.
This new tablet is the first time the bookseller has partnered with Lenovo. The previous generation Nook Tablet 7 and Nook Tablet 10 were designed by a company based in China, which nobody has really heard of before and came out in 2017/2018. Sales were dismal and the tablets were discontinued last summer. Prior to that, B&N partnered with Samsung for a series of tablets, they signed a long term contract that had a firm commit of over one million units. They released 3 different models of the Samsung Galaxy Tab for Nook, which was basically existing Samsung tablets, that had Nook branding on it. Sales were not that strong, and B&N basically had to write down the entire contract and took a major loss. Prior to the Samsung deal, B&N was designing their own tablets, which included the seminal Nook Color, Nook HD and HD+, which had very stylish design sensibilities. Suffice to say, the bookseller has not had much luck outsourcing their tablets to other companies, but maybe the third time’s the charm?
Update: Barnes and Noble just launched their pre-order page and it looks like the tablet will come out on March 31st, Good e-Reader is also taking orders for international users.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
