After a slew of rumors circulated over the last few days, Barnes and Noble officially announced that they would be debuting a 8GB version of the Nook Tablet. The tablet will come with a reduced price to match its reduced memory amount, but most everything else about the 8GB model will be the same as the 16GB counterpart.
The official announcement of the 8GB Nook Tablet came directly from Barnes and Noble this morning. The tablet will be priced at $199, putting it at exactly the same price as Amazon's Kindle Fire, with the exact same amount of memory. The 8GB model is available immediately at nook.com and will likely find its way into Barnes and Noble stores quickly, if not immediately.
There is one interesting change between the 8GB model and the 16GB model. The 8GB model, in addition to having half the internal storage, will also have half the RAM. The tablet will only sport 512MB of RAM as opposed to the 1GB currently on board in the 16GB version of the tablet. The RAM is much more of an issue on the Nook Tablet than internal memory considering the devices have SD card slots allowing for the storage to be expanded.
The change in RAM amounts between the two models was something Barnes and Noble conveniently left out of their press release when announcing the 8GB tablet. The actual specs for the device are instead listed on the product page.
Another interesting item in the official press release is the announcment that Barnes and Noble will drop the price of the Nook Color to $169. That is likely a move to bolster sales and move that device into a price point that makes more sense considering the $199 price point on their lowest end tablet.
Do either the new 8GB Nook Tablet or reduced price on the Nook Color interest any of you folks? Would you consider either of these devices for the purpose of hacking/rooting? Let us know what you think in the comments.
