New Nook HD and Nook HD+

Barnes & Noble is playing with fire — Kindle Fire. On the heels of Amazon's Kindle Fire HD announcement, the brick-and-mortar book retailer introduced the new Nook HD and Nook HD+ this week, boasting the "world's highest-resolution display on a seven-inch media tablet" and the "lightest, lowest-priced full HD tablet" on the market. Barnes & Noble's new offerings — the Nook HD 8GB ($199), Nook HD 16 GB ($229), Nook HD+ 16 GB ($269), and Nook HD+ 32 GB ($299) — are available for pre-order today.

Both the Nook HD/HD+ and Kindle Fire HD include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, run on a custom Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and are tapped into massive selections of books, magazines, and video. So what sets the latest contestant in the tablet competition apart? Here are eight distinctions between the two competing high-definition tablet ereaders.