We're quite excited at the prospect of seeing Amazon's Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD touch down on UK soil, but it's certainly not going to have things all its own way when it does.
Especially now that rival US bookmonger Barnes & Noble has decided to crash the party with its own pair of competitively priced Android tablets, the newly announced Nook HD and Nook HD+.
The Nook line of e-readers has been around for a few years now in the US, where it slugs it out toe-to-toe with Amazon's Kindle for the market share high ground, but until today it hasn't managed to make its way past border control into the wider world.
So what's the deal and how do the Nook HD and Nook HD+ stack up against their Amazon rivals?
On first impressions, rather well it has to be said. The base 7-inch Nook HD is fully deserving of its suffix thanks to a screen resolution of 1440 x 900, which works out at a class-leading 243ppi.
It's light on its feet too, weighing in at just 315g, and you can choose between “snow” and “smoke” on the colour front (who makes this stuff up?).
Under the hood is a 1.3GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, a choice of 8GB or 16GB of internal storage and a generous 4,000mAh of battery juice, while Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is tasked with OS duties.
And so to the all-important price tag, and B&N isn't looking to take any prisoners: the 8GB variant will set you back just £159, with its larger capacity brother costing £30 more. There will be plenty of debate about how the specification matches up to its rivals', but on price alone it's a serious play for some of the entry-level tablet action, and certainly a viable alternative to the Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7 slates.
Opt for the Nook HD+, however, and you'll have a further 2 inches of screen size to play with, complete with an iPad-bothering resolution of 1920 x 1280 (256ppi).
It's still just a dual-core processor running the show, though it's been clocked at a faster 1.5GHz, while storage options have been bumped to 16GB or 32GB.
Like its downmarket brother, the Nook HD+ ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich pre-installed, and price-wise you're looking at £229 (16GB) and £269 (32GB).
All four models will go on sale in November, which – needless to say – is just in time for the Christmas spending bonanza.
