Barnes & Noble is holding an event in New York August 20th to launch its next tablet. It’ll be the first tablet to wear the NOOK name that wasn’t designed and produced by the bookseller though. It’s a new version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4.

We already know that… which is what makes the company’s teaser video look a bit odd. It’s not like we don’t already know what to expect: A Samsung tablet with B&N NOOK software.

But that’s not the only odd thing about the video.

What we see is people reacting to a tablet, although you can only see the back of the tablet… the software remains hidden.

What we also see is a video that looks a lot like Amazon’s teaser for the Fire Phone which was released a few weeks before the company acknowledged that its first smartphone was on the way.

The difference is that Amazon’s video was designed to show a bunch of people being impressed by some surprising new feature (3D visual effects) without explicitly showing you what it was they were reacting to.

Here’s Amazon’s video:

B&N’s video shows a bunch of people holding a tablet that we already know exists and expressing delight at the fact that they can read stuff on it… just as they could probably already do if they just bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 or any other existing Android tablet and installed the free NOOK app on it.

Clearly Barnes & Noble is hoping to drum up some excitement for the tablet it’ll be selling in stores and online this fall. But it’s hard to do that with a device that’s just not all that exciting. You can already buy a Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 table twith a 1280 x 800 pixel display, Android 4.4 KitKat software, and 8GB of storage for around $200 or less.

Unless the Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK edition tablet has some seriously cool software add-ons, better specs, or a lower price, it’s just another Android tablet that’ll hit a market that’s already flooded with similar devices.

On the other hand, at least the video has an appearance from Grumpy Cat.

via The Digital Reader (I got the email too, but deleted it before I noticed the video)

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3 replies on “B&N’s new tablet promo video looks oddly familiar”

  1. Grumpy Cat = Win for B&N
    I’m anxious to see the final product and price point. I have loved my NOOK HD, and HD+. They were an excellent bargain.

  2. To be honest, I also deleted the email without opening it, LOL.

    I was tipped to the video by an inside source at a B&N store.

    1. Hah. Yeah, they send an email just about every day with a list of books on sale or something… but I rarely buy from the NOOK store and I’m too lazy to unsubscribe so I usually just delete the message every morning. 🙂

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