With access to Barnes & Nobles‘ e-book store, Pandigital’s Novel e-reader has a 7″ color screen (800×600), 1Gb memory (along with an SD-card slot), ARM11 CPU, and wireless for $200 in June. Although sexier for multimedia, color LCDs are hardly as appropriate as e-ink for reading.

The Novel combines portable media players with e-readers. Equipped with Android, the Novel can surf the web and play music/video but only for 6 hours during reading, less for other usages. Think of the Novel as a cheaper and less powerful iPad, which, too has its limitations as a slate.