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Kindle Fire-fighting Nook HD tablets coming to UK, for £159

Barnes and Noble is releasing two new tablets for Brits, the 7 and 9-inch Nook HD and Nook HD+.

Luke Westaway Senior editor
Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.
Luke Westaway
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Watch this: CNET News Nook HD tablets

Barnes and Noble is bringing its US-centric Nook tablets into the UK, in a bid to extinguish the Kindle Fire HD. The stateside bookseller will be flogging two tablets to Brits this autumn, dubbed the Nook HD and Nook HD+.

The Nook HD is a 7.7-inch tablet that's going to cost £159, the same price as both Amazon's Kindle Fire HD tablet and Google's Nexus 7. It has an impressive 1,440x900 pixel resolution, weighs 315g and is powered by a dual-core 1.3GHz processor.

If you want more than the standard 8GB of storage, a 16GB option is available for £189.

The Nook HD+ meanwhile has a larger 9.5-inch display, which packs a whopping 1,920x1,280 pixels. Under its bonnet a 1.5GHz dual-core processor keeps things ticking along nicely, while Barnes and Noble reckons this is the lightest full HD tablet ever created -- it weighs a mere 515g.

The larger size will set you back a bit extra, with the Nook HD+ costing £229 for the 16GB model and £269 for the 32GB option.

Both tablets are powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and will be out in the UK in late November, in time for Christmas.

So what do you do with these tablets, exactly? Well, Barnes and Noble is hoping you'll spend your pennies to fill them with books, movies and TV shows from the Nook Store, which offers access to 2.5 million books.

A video-streaming service is also en route. Dubbed Nook Video, the service is set to play host to movie and TV treats from the likes of HBO, Warner Bros, Disney and Sony Pictures. Here's hoping there's plenty of video available to Brits when the service launches this autumn.

Are you intrigued by the Nook HD and Nook HD+? Will you be throwing down your cash, or does the tablet have you wrapped around its little finger? Tell me in the comments or on our Facebook wall.