Specs: B&N's Nook Tablet vs. Amazon's Kindle Fire

Bookseller Barnes & Noble rolled out its Nook Tablet yesterday and it's going to be a neck-and-neck race between B&N's latest offering and the Amazon Kindle Fire, which was announced earlier this year. For one thing, the specs on the two devices are unabashedly similar; like the Fire, the Nook Tablet sports a 7-inch 1024-by-600 color touchscreen, 1 Ghz dual-core CPU, 8 hours of battery life, a custom version of Android 2.3, Wi-Fi, and Adobe Flash. Both are focused primarily upon content consumption (neither of the devices include a camera, 3G, or Bluetooth) but include a browser and a select offering of Android apps.

The differences between the two e-readers have primarily to do with RAM and storage; for an additional $50 on top of the Kindle's price of $200, the Nook Tablet has 16 GB of storage, a microSD slot to allow for even more, and 1 GB of RAM. The Kindle Fire comes with 8GB, no expansion feature, and 512MB of RAM. For those looking at dimensions and weight, the Kindle Fire weighs in at 14.6 ounces and at 5.7 x 4.7 x 4.5, is a hair smaller than the nook, which is 14.1 ounces and 8.1 x 5 x .48.

Barnes & Noble began taking pre-orders yesterday and the Nook Tablet ships Nov. 17.

For easy side-by-side comparison, check out the specs below.