Yesterday, I noted the arrival of the Nook tablet, which will go head-to-head with the Amazon Fire, and also offer some competition for Apple's iPad. For those who are already looking forward to Black Friday, here are excerpts from the latest reviews and commentary about the Nook tablet, which will cost $249 -- about $50 more than the Fire -- and be available Nov. 18.

Christian Science Monitor: Perhaps the biggest difference between the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire? Because Barnes & Noble is more focused on selling e-books and other digital reading content, it’s less restrictive than the Kindle Fire, allowing users to access content from other suppliers. Amazon, by contrast, is reportedly selling the Kindle Fire at a loss so it can make profits selling Amazon services.

PCWorld: Double the amount of RAM and storage alone would justify the extra $50. ... The price might be as low as half...of one of Apple’s tablets, but you won’t get any cameras for video chatting...and the selection of third-party apps is minimal, as both Barnes & Noble and Amazon curate their own app portals.

Wired:[O]n a 7-inch tablet with proper hardware inside, gaming feels just right. In fact, an emphasis on gaming, video and digital comics (a new media category for Barnes & Noble, thanks to a big new partnership with Marvel) suggests to me that the Nook Tablet’s target audience (or one of them, at least) isn’t so much the middle-class career moms who snapped up the first-gen Nook Color, but rather their offspring, who love games, comics and Harry Potter.

Computerworld: [T]he Kindle Fire offers 8GB of storage with no SD card expansion -- however, it does offer streaming media via Amazon Prime, an advantage that makes the Fire as much a media source as an e-reader.