Nokia Booklet 3G: Would You Pay $600 For This Netbook?

Best Buy announced recently that they will be the exclusive US retailers of the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook. Soon people began to speculate on price. Would it be $800 to match the cost in Euros? Less to compete with whatever the subsidized price will be from wireless carriers? A tipster at PhoneArena shed some light on the issue by sending a screenshot of Best Buy’s inventory system that shows a price of $599.99. Yikes.

We’ve seen netbooks at and above that price point before (think ASUS Eee PC S101 and Vivienne Tam Edition HP Mini 1000), and the Booklet 3G is certainly an impressive-looking machine. But $500+ netbooks don’t always do very well (unless they come down in price) because consumers expect them to be inexpensive.

The one good thing that can be said is that the un-subsidized price isn’t as high as we feared and may make it worth buying over the subsidized one in the end. $400 + $30/month contract + 2 years = $1120. Compared to that, $600 seems like a deal. (Though it’s not.)