The Verge reports that Barnes & Noble is placing a low-end version of its Nook Tablet in Wal-Mart, launching at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, February 22nd. The device will have only 8 GB of RAM, the same as the Kindle Fire, and is expected to launch at a lower price than the current 16GB model’s $249. (The most obvious price point is, of course, the Kindle Fire’s $199, but B&N and Wal-Mart could surprise us.)

Of course, to call it an 8 GB model is something of a misnomer. Unlike the Kindle Fire, it will probably reserve all but 1 GB of available memory for B&N content, as the 16 GB model does. However, also unlike the Fire, it should still sport a 32GB microSD card expansion slot, which can be used for as much content as the reader wants to store there.

It’s long been known that Wal-Mart likes to talk manufacturers into producing low-end versions of their products which Wal-Mart can sell for less. It’s not surprising that they’d do the same with the most popular non-Amazon 8” tablet. It remains to be seen whether this price break will be enough to let B&N compete with the more popular Kindle Fire.

(Found via TechCrunch.)

4 COMMENTS

  1. @Shelley

    Not all books are text-to-speech enabled. The ones that are will have that notation on the product description page.

    To use it on your Kindle, from your Menu, choose Experimental. You’ll see the option to turn TTS on or off there.

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