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You get some decided advantages ... including more RAM, great video, a microSD slot and attention paid to smaller things, like the built-in mic, which lets users do things like recording narration for kids books.

Although the Nook Tablet is very good—a four-star product—it's essentially flanked by that pair of $200 devices, with the Nook Color offering the same excellent reading experience, and the Kindle Fire, which is superior on apps and multimedia.

Although there are some odd UI choices and frustrations, everything is in its right place. It is, in short, a perfectly slimmed down Android tablet masquerading as an ereader – something many will prefer over Kindle Fire’s obviously service-oriented approach.

With more storage and a growing app store, the Nook Tablet is a worthy--albeit slightly more expensive--competitor to the Kindle Fire.

I have less doubt about the Nook Tablet as a capable product than I did about the Kindle Fire. The experience is not frustrating or jagged and doesn't feel as unfinished. Indeed, it is more intuitive, and the device is more responsive. ... I do have some doubts about the value of the Nook ecosystem.

If you're looking for a sub-$300 device, have already dropped a fair amount of money building a Nook library and don't already have the Nook Color, this is a no brainer. The Nook Tablet is a very capable device that will suffice for 90% of the tablet-using population.

Though the Nook Tablet lacks the flexibility of a full-featured tablet, it excels at reading, and it offers a smattering of solid streaming media services. For those reasons alone, the Nook Tablet edges out the Kindle Fire, by a hair.

From the meager app offerings to the clunky UI and cumbersome build, it's a device that feels significantly older than it really is at this point.