(Image source: Mashable)  

BY EMILY SPAIN

Mystery solved.  Barnes and Noble revealed its Nook Tablet Monday, immediately sparking comparisons to Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Let the competition begin.

Like the Kindle Fire - the Nook Tablet is a 7-inch touch screen with WiFi and runs Android 2.3. Here’s a look at the promotional video:

“It’s the fastest, lightest Nook Tablet ever, with the best in HD entertainment. Let me show you, with just a touch I can explore the world’s largest bookstore.” (Video: Barnes and Noble)

The tablets have their differences though, like memory storage. The Nook Tablet has 1 GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The Kindle Fire offers only half that. PCMag tried out the new Nook and said that extra space makes a difference.

“The device was very responsive when playing videos and navigating through interactive magazines. At least in part, this is because of some pretty robust specs. The Nook tablet has a dual-core CPU and double the memory of the Nook Color. I was able to scrub through pages of an interactive magazine as fast as I could turn the page, which is a good sign.”

The Nook Tablet also has longer battery life than the Kindle and weighs less according to Gizmodo. But those perks come at a price.  The Nook Tablet costs $249... 50 more dollars than the Kindle Fire. And ZDNET says that could slow down sales.

“People buying this tablet don’t care about how much RAM or storage it has, or what version of Android it runs, or whether it has expandable storage or not ... At this end of the spectrum there’s only one metric that really matters - price. Battery life may catch the eye, but I don’t think that it’s spectacular enough to offset the $50 price difference.”

The 50 extra bucks on the price tag also has Computerworld predicting the Kindle Fire to come out on top.

“As a result, the Kindle Fire, with its better-recognized brand name and access to widely known Amazon content, should sell better among holiday shoppers in the initial weeks when both go on sale.”

Despite the price factor, a writer for Mashable says both the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire have a fighting chance.

“At this point, two things are clear: we now have two solid contenders in the 7-inch tablet space, but can’t recommend either one until we get a chance to test both of them, side-by-side, and this is officially Tablet War.”

The Kindle Fire hits the shelves on November 15th.

Three days later - the Nook Tablet.