The Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 often receive most of the press, but Barnes & Noble has a fairly good lineup of tablets on its hands as well. The book retailer has reduced the price of the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color, bringing the former’s price in line with its biggest competitors. And “just in time for the back to school season,” no less. The NOOK Tablet 16GB received the biggest price drop, going from $249 to $199. The 8GB version, meanwhile, dropped by just $20 to $179. The same goes for the NOOK Color, which now retails for $149 (formerly $169).

The 7-inch NOOK Tablet includes a VividView display, dual-core processor, microSD card slot, and either 512MB or 1GB of RAM, depending on which version you get. As Aaron notes on our sister site Pocketables, there are also plenty of ROMs available for you to throw on the device should you prefer a more traditional version of Android. The 7-inch NOOK Color, on the other hand, includes a 1024 x 600 IPS display, a 1GHz processor, and an SD card slot.

With Microsoft now in control of just under one fifth of Newco, the tentatively-titled Barnes & Noble subsidiary charged with running the company’s ebook business, it’ll be interesting to see what the next generation of NOOK devices look like.

[Android Central via Pocketables]