Barnes & Noble has never been one to let Amazon sit still in the e-reader space, constantly on their tail with the more-than-good-enough Nook line of readers and tablets. Today, the company introduced its next step in combating not only Amazon but also Apple by releasing their next generation Nook tablet devices, the Nook HD and Nook HD+.

The Nook HD is a 7″ tablet running a version of Barnes & Noble’s highly customized Android operating system (which is now based on Android 4.0) that the company is claiming to be “the lightest and highest resolution HD 7″ tablet”. Priced at $199, you get a 1440 x 900 display (higher than that of either the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD), a 1.3 GHz dual-core OMAP 4470 processor, and an impressive 1GB of RAM.

The Nook HD+ is a 9″ take on the device, running the same OS but with a higher 1920 x 1280 resolution (which still falls short of Apple’s third generation iPad) and a boosted 1.5 GHz dual-core OMAP 4470 processor, and also comes with 1GB of RAM.

Both devices have been excluded from Google’s Play ecosystem, for better or for worse, so instead users are stuck with B&N’s impressive but still not nearly as large ecosystem of their own. Don’t worry, consumers will still have plenty of apps, movies, shows, and especially books to enjoy on these new devices

The Nook HD will cost $199 with 8GB of storage or $229 with 16GB of storage, while the Nook HD+ costs $269 with 16GB of storage or $299 with 32GB – very aggressive pricing to be sure, especially with the three higher end models. Availability has yet to be announced.

Via: The Verge
Source: Barnes & Noble (PDF)