Barnes & Noble on Monday unveiled its new $249 Nook Tablet, an an Android-based e-book reader that includes more features of a full-blown tablet than the company's prior offerings. Compared to the recently released $199 Kindle Fire tablet by Amazon, the Barnes & Noble 's tablet offers more memory and claims a longer battery life.

The Nook Tablet will be in stores and shipped to homes on Nov. 17. It is powered by an 1GHz dual-core processor by TI and 1GB of RAM with an expandable SD slot to add memory. It comes with a 7-inch VividView color touchscreen (16 million colors) and will come preloaded with apps from Netflix, Netflix, Hulu and Pandora.

The Nook Tablet weighs less than a pound, the tablet has a battery life that enables nine hours of video watching.

Also coming soon to NOOK Tablet: Flixster with UltraViolet, for newly released movies and TV shows from Warner Bros. and other studios. NOOK Tablet owners can listen to songs using music services, including Pandora, pre-loaded on NOOK Tablet, as well as Rhapsody, Grooveshark and MOG, all available with a free 14-day trial. NOOK Tablet owners can also listen to their own songs wherever they go with the built-in music player.

Users can also access their personal NOOK Library through the free and secure NOOK Cloud service, which also powers the integration and synchronization between devices, as well as NOOK's shopping experience and social features.

NOOK Apps include Angry Birds Rio and Seasons, SCRABBLE, Epicurious, My Cast Weather, Taptu, Style.com, Spanish for Dummies, Bejeweled 2, Ms. Pac Man and more.

NOOK Tablet owners can also shop from the company's bookstore, featuring more than 2.5 million books, interactive magazines, newspapers, comic books and children's books.

Barnes & Noble also cut the price on its Nook Color, to $199, and its Nook Simple Touch Reader to $99. The company claims that the new Nook color will be even better next month, with more than 100 feature enhancements, access to video and music services, apps, comics and more, while the improved NOOK Simple Touch features very fast page turns and longer battery life.

Barnes & Noble also invites third-party developers and content providers to join its NOOK Developer program (www.nookdeveloper.com) and build applications optimized for NOOK devices.

Specs

• 7-inch VividView Color Touchscreen
• 16 million+ colors, IPS display
• High resolution display - 1024 X 600, 169 pixels per inch (PPI)
• Fully laminated with no air gaps for remarkable clarity and reduced reflection & glare-read indoors or outside