Nook HD: lightest and highest resolution 7-inch tablet

I'm David Carnoy, executive editor for CNET.com and I'm here at the new Nook tablet launch. There are 2 different models. I have the 7-inch model in my hand. It comes in 2 different colors, snow and smoke. This is the smoke color. It's kind of a gray color and it's claim to fame is that it is the lightest color 7-inch tablet. It's about 20 percent lighter than the Kindle HD at 11.1 ounces. It also has the highest resolution 7-inch tablet right now. It has a 1440 x 900 display with 243 ppi, that's the pixel density. It doesn't have a camera. It does have Bluetooth, and it does have a home button. It is a redesigned version. There is no little loop on this one like the signature loop on the earlier tablet. It's also narrower than the Kindle Fire HD. Barnes & Noble also redesigned the interface. You can now have profiles from members of your family, and you can password-protect those profiles so that little Johnny's books can be in one profile and your books can be in another profile and that also applies to apps and movies. That's the other big story here is that Barnes & Noble now has video on this device. It has its own branded video store. This is once again a skinned version of Ice Cream Sandwich. It is not an open Android model. This obviously has Barnes & Noble interface on it. There's also a new feature called Nook Channels. It's kind of a recommendation engine that doesn't just apply to books. It also applies to video and other content, even magazines. You cannot access Google Play from this tablet. This is a curated app store. There are about 10,000 apps now in the store and that grows every day. In terms of pricing, this starts at $199 for an 8-gigabyte model and then $229 for a 16-gigabyte model. The difference here though is that this is expandable memory. There is a slot, an SD card slot so you can add additional memory. In terms of missing features as I said, there is no built-in camera here. There also is no HDMI outport. There is however an HDMI accessory. It is a little expensive at 39 dollars. Barnes & Noble is also highlighting the fact that the processor in this device is slightly faster than the processor in the Kindle Fire HD. This has a 1.3 gigahertz processor versus a 1.2 gigahertz processor in the Kindle Fire HD. They're also claiming that this does about 80 percent faster graphics performance. We'll of course have to test that. In terms of battery life, you're looking at about 10.5 hours of reading time and about 9 hours of video watching time. This product is available for pre-sell now, but it won't ship until the end of October. I'm David Carnoy, and that's the Nook HD. Thanks for watching.