 Hey, this is Joanna for The Verge and this is the Nook Tablet, which is Barnes & Noble's new update to the Nook Color and their competitor to the Amazon Fire. And as you can see immediately from looking at the design, it looks exactly like the Color, but that's not really a bad thing. The design is really nice in hand. I actually really do like the silver finish, which has replaced the black edges on the Color. They've also kept the hook in the left hand corner, which is a nice design element, but not really all that useful. It's actually different from the Color in two ways though. It is now lighter. It only weighs.88 pounds, which makes it really nice in hand and actually on par with the Kindle in terms of weight. And the second change is on the internal specs. And since it's now a tablet, it has a dual core TI OMAP processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage, which all around is better than the Kindle. The Kindle only has half a gigabyte of RAM and also 8GB of storage. On top of that, there's a micro SD card slot right underneath the hook so you can add some more storage. With the Nook tablet, you'll be spending most of your time touching the beautiful 7-inch IPS display. I've actually found it to be a little bit brighter than the Kindle Fire's and the viewing angles to be a bit better. Barnes & Noble hasn't actually changed too much when it comes to the software. It still looks a lot like the Nook Color and it is a heavily skinned version of Android 2.3. But there are some things I really like about it. The first is the fact that they have a physical home button unlike the Kindle Fire. You can select that and it brings up a list of commonly used apps and shortcuts. When you're on the home screen itself, you can customize it with apps and books and you can also resize the icons. Of course, Barnes & Noble has a big book selection and they've also added some new features including a read and play and read and record function, mostly for children's books that allows you to record your voice and read back some of the text. While Barnes & Noble does have a good ecosystem of newspapers and magazines in its Newsstand app, they don't have a great ecosystem when it comes to movies and videos and music. Unlike Amazon, they don't have a place to buy music on the device so you've got to side load it or you've got to rely on third party applications like Netflix and Hulu Plus to stream video. The app selection also isn't that great. There's Angry Birds and some other typical apps you may want but unfortunately the selection in the store just isn't as good as Amazon's Fire. The Nook Tablet costs $250 which is $50 more than Amazon's Kindle Fire and while you might get nicer hardware and better specs and double the memory, the Kindle Fire definitely provides a better ecosystem for downloading music, video and apps.
 Hey, this is Joanna for The Verge and this is the Nook Tablet, which is Barnes & Noble's
 new update to the Nook Color and their competitor to the Amazon Fire.
 And as you can see immediately from looking at the design, it looks exactly like the Color,
 but that's not really a bad thing.
 The design is really nice in hand.
 I actually really do like the silver finish, which has replaced the black edges on the
 Color.
 They've also kept the hook in the left hand corner, which is a nice design element, but
 not really all that useful.
 It's actually different from the Color in two ways though.
 It is now lighter.
 It only weighs.88 pounds, which makes it really nice in hand and actually on par with
 the Kindle in terms of weight.
 And the second change is on the internal specs.
 And since it's now a tablet, it has a dual core TI OMAP processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB
 of storage, which all around is better than the Kindle.
 The Kindle only has half a gigabyte of RAM and also 8GB of storage.
 On top of that, there's a micro SD card slot right underneath the hook so you can add some
 more storage.
 With the Nook tablet, you'll be spending most of your time touching the beautiful 7-inch
 IPS display.
 I've actually found it to be a little bit brighter than the Kindle Fire's and the viewing
 angles to be a bit better.
 Barnes & Noble hasn't actually changed too much when it comes to the software.
 It still looks a lot like the Nook Color and it is a heavily skinned version of Android
 2.3.
 But there are some things I really like about it.
 The first is the fact that they have a physical home button unlike the Kindle Fire.
 You can select that and it brings up a list of commonly used apps and shortcuts.
 When you're on the home screen itself, you can customize it with apps and books and you
 can also resize the icons.
 Of course, Barnes & Noble has a big book selection and they've also added some new features including
 a read and play and read and record function, mostly for children's books that allows you
 to record your voice and read back some of the text.
 While Barnes & Noble does have a good ecosystem of newspapers and magazines in its Newsstand
 app, they don't have a great ecosystem when it comes to movies and videos and music.
 Unlike Amazon, they don't have a place to buy music on the device so you've got to side
 load it or you've got to rely on third party applications like Netflix and Hulu Plus to
 stream video.
 The app selection also isn't that great.
 There's Angry Birds and some other typical apps you may want but unfortunately the selection
 in the store just isn't as good as Amazon's Fire.
 The Nook Tablet costs $250 which is $50 more than Amazon's Kindle Fire and while you might
 get nicer hardware and better specs and double the memory, the Kindle Fire definitely provides
 a better ecosystem for downloading music, video and apps.