Barnes & Noble announced that it would release an 8GB Nook tablet, and priced it at $199, the same as the Amazon Kindle Fire. As well as having half the amount of storage as the 16GB Nook (which will remain at $249), the 8GB Nook will also have half the amount of memory: Just 512MB, as opposed to the 1GB of RAM in the 16GB Nook. The Kindle Fire also has just 512MB of RAM.
What also remains to be seen is how much space will be available for users on the 8GB Nook; based on our experience with the 16GB Nook, we're assuming that there will be 5GB of free storage, but only 1GB of that will be available for non-B&N content, such as photos and videos. However, the Nook does have a microSD card slot for additional storage.
The drop in price could help even the playing field between the two tablets, which are in a tight race with each other to win the enhanced eReader category.
To avoid a price war with its own products, Barnes & Noble also announced it was dropping the price of its Nook Color eReader by $30 to $169.
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