Nook Tablet announced: $249, available November 17th
As expected, Barnes & Noble has taken the wraps off of its latest Nook today — the so-called Nook Tablet, designed to replace the Nook Color with refreshed specs across the board including an “HD viewing experience.”
Context & Ripple Effects
The announcement closes a two-week leak cycle: what B&N employees had teased as a 'Nook Color 2' landing on November 7 (the rumored Nook Color 2 launch) arrived instead as the Nook Tablet, matching the $249, mid-November details that surfaced last week almost exactly. The device formally replaces the Nook Color in the lineup with upgraded specs and an HD viewing experience.
Timing matters because of who it's aimed at: Amazon's Kindle Fire launched into the same sub-$250 slot weeks ago, and B&N comes to the fight holding Borders' abandoned customer base — it took over Borders.com traffic and social accounts after the chain's October closure.
First-order effects
- Barnes & Noble now fields a true tablet rather than an e-reader-plus, putting it head-to-head with Amazon's Kindle Fire at the same $249 price point starting November 17th.
- The Nook Color moves to legacy status immediately, leaving B&N to manage two overlapping devices through the holiday season.
Second-order effects
- Amazon faces its first hardware rival with a comparable retail footprint and a books-first brand, forcing the Kindle Fire's value case to rest on content and services rather than price alone.
- Publishers and content partners gain a second credible Android-based storefront at the low end, weakening any single-buyer dynamic around Amazon's channel.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, dedicated e-readers become loss-leader entry points while the real contest shifts to sub-$250 tablets backed by media ecosystems — a structural squeeze on pure e-reader vendors.
- Bookstore chains are repositioning from physical retailers into device-and-storefront companies, with hardware launches like this one serving as the visible edge of that pivot.
The trend: E-reader makers are converting their devices into low-cost tablets to defend their digital storefronts against Amazon and Apple, turning the holiday sub-$250 tier into the decisive battleground.