The new Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet comparison

The war between Barnes and Noble Nook tablet and Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is heating up. Lets have the new Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet comparison to see the difference.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Design
Both the devices have a 7 inch screen and the Nook Tablet weighs about 400 grams while the Kindle Fire weighs 414 grams. Both the devices are easy to hold and the Nook Tablet comes with a handy hook on one of its corners, making it tag along to your favorite stuff, if needed. The bezel on the Nook is slightly more than the Kindle fire, but on a day-to-day usage, that shouldn’t matter much.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Display
Both the tablets have In Plane Switching (IPS) based displays and both have the 1024×600 resolution which is now found on almost all 7″ devices. The displays on both the tablets have a screen density of 169 ppi, and both the tablets have capacitive screens which support multi-touch and gesture based movements depending on the software as well.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Camera
These tablets from Barnes & Noble and Amazon do not have cameras, owing to the fact that they’re budget tablets made for quick entertainment and reading purposes, mainly.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Operating System Software
Both the tablets run on a whole new User Interface built over Android. Both have their own Android app stores, and there are quite a lot of apps available on them but Amazon’s store has thousands of apps and the catalog is being updated everyday, while the Nook Tablet’s app store was started recently, and is slowly improving.

The Kindle Fire comes with Amazon’s Prime subscription for movies, ebooks and shows, while the Nook Tablet has Netflix/Hulu Plus subscriptions on it, based on your existing plan or you could pick up a new one.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Processor and Battery
The Nook Tablet has a dual core 1 Ghz TI OMAP 4430 processor with 1 GB RAM while the Kindle Fire from Amazon has a similar dual core 1 Ghz TI OMAP 4430 processor with 512MB of DDR2 RAM.

The Nook Tablet has a battery which claims of 11.5 hours of reading and 9h video playback when WiFi is turned off while the Amazon Kindle has 8h reading and7.5h video playback when Wi-Fi is turned off on it.

Nook vs Kindle Fire: Memory and Connectivity
The Nook Tablet has 16GB of internal memory and a microSD slot which supports upto 32GB but the Amazon Kindle Fire comes with 8 GB of internal memory but there’s no slot for further expansion on it. There is WiFi on both the devices, with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n.

Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet comparison: Features Chart

Courtesy of CNET, here under is the detailed Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet comparison chart to compare the features of both gadgets face to face:

Another advantage the Nook have over the Kindle Fire is the microSD card slot to allow extra storage portability and rooting to a full Android OS (with access to the Android app store). But with cloud storage onboard memory is rapidly becoming irrelevant, so that content availability is really of "Prime" importance here, and in that department Amazon wins hands down.

Barnes & Noble can only claim to be the "biggest bookstore in the world" because they have brick and mortar stores as well as an online website. But fewer and fewer people are shopping in those physical stores, which is why they've recently jettisoned their entire DVD/Audiobook departments in favor of "Games and Toys".

With Amazon you can get video streaming, free monthly ebook rentals, and free two-day shipping all for $79 per year, Barnes and Noble is gives access to their new content partnerships with Netflix, Hulu, and Rhapsody as bonus perks of their device. So paying $7.99 a month for Netflix streaming ($95 a year for access to a truly lame movie selection), and another $7.99 a month for Hulu Plus so that I can watch television shows that I can DVR already (that's $190 a year now), plus $9.99 a month for Rhapsody (an additional $120/year).

Another factor might be important to consider here, and that's the Nook's native ePub support. Whereas Amazon's main format is proprietary, ePubs are open source and quickly becoming universal. In a way it boggles me that Amazon has been able to make its restricted ebooks the dominant format in the market.

Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet Price Comparison

But really when it comes right down to it there's only one comparison that shoppers are going to make, and that's the $249 price tag versus $199. Because when it comes to dollars and cents, there's just no comparison.

The new Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire Tablet comparison: Verdict

Both the tablets have almost the same specifications, but the Nook Tablet seems to have better memory storage capacities and comes with a better RAM. Though, the Amazon Kindle Fire wins in the software part, considering the more powerful App Store Amazon has, along with their huge library of books and more and more of them coming in everyday with publishers launching their Kindle version alongside the hardcopy version as well. The Nook Tablet is costlier than the Amazon Kindle by 50$ and makes a good device for everyday use, with casual amount of entertainment and reading while the Amazon Kindle Fire is for the power user, who might want to try out more Android apps or do more with his tablet.