Nook Tablet Teardown
When it rains (gadgets), it pours (gadgets). We've seen a lot of neat devices come out in the past few weeks and have managed to get our hands on B&N's response to the Kindle Fire: the Nook Tablet. Join us as we dig in to see what the newest tablet has in store for us.
Context & Ripple Effects
Barnes & Noble put the Nook Tablet on shelves on November 16 at $249, positioning it squarely against Amazon's Kindle Fire, and The Verge's November 18 review already put the device through its paces. iFixit's teardown three days after launch extends that scrutiny beneath the casing — the same treatment it gave Samsung's Galaxy Tab a year earlier in its 2010 Galaxy Tab teardown.
The timing matters: with two $199-$249 tablets from booksellers competing for the same holiday buyer, what is inside the Nook Tablet — and how serviceable it is — becomes part of the sales pitch rather than an engineering footnote.
First-order effects
- Holiday shoppers comparing the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire now have a component-level view of B&N's hardware alongside The Verge's software-focused review, adding repairability and build quality to the comparison criteria.
Second-order effects
- Amazon's Kindle Fire team faces the same teardown treatment by default — once one sub-$250 tablet is opened up, the rival's internals and cost structure become the obvious next question for reviewers and buyers.
Third-order effects
- If every budget tablet gets torn down within days of launch, hardware differentiation in the sub-$250 segment shifts toward what suppliers and assembly choices can be verified publicly, pressuring B&N and Amazon to compete on ecosystem and content rather than spec sheets.
The trend: Sub-$250 tablets from content companies like Barnes & Noble and Amazon are being judged as much by what teardowns reveal about their hardware as by their storefronts.