NEW YORK, Feb 22 — Booksellers Barnes & Noble have taken the wraps off a brand new 7” Nook tablet, priced to rival Amazon’s $199 (RM603) Kindle Fire.

The new tablet is essentially identical to the US$249 device Barnes & Noble (B&N) tablet released in November last year, but features half as much on-board storage and RAM, plus a lower price.

The new version of the Nook matches the Kindle Fire’s 8GB storage capacity and 512MB of RAM and is US$300 cheaper than the least expensive iPad.

It retains the same form factor and specs including a 7” Vivid View IPS color touchsensitive display (with a resolution of 1024 x 600), a 1GHz dual-core processor, a microSD memory expansion slot, WiFi and around 11.5 hours of battery life in reading mode.

B&N revealed that it had also reduced the price of its Nook Color tablet from US$199 to US$169.

The 8GB Nook tablet is available online now. It will arrive in physical stores in the coming weeks. — AFP/Relaxnews