Android tablets are becoming cheaper by the day, with more and more quality manufacturers like the Nook and Amazon building ones for just around 250$. While this segment was ruled by the Chinese tablets over the last couple of years, this now seems to be an interesting segment to look at for the Android tablet makers. The Kindle Fire was launched by Amazon along with a bunch of other Kindles with various options followed by the Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble, which made its entry recently.
If you are looking at cheap Android tablets, do make sure you also check out Best Android Tablets below Rs 15000, which is regularly updated.
In this post, We compare the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and Nook Tablet, looking at all the features and technical specifications in detail:
Table of Contents:
- Form Factor Comparison
- Display Comparison
- Camera Comparison
- Operating System and User Interface Comparison
- Connectivity Comparison
- Memory Comparison
- Processor and Battery Comparison
Form Factor:
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.
Winner: Nook Tablet
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.
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.
Operating System and User Interface:
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.
Winner: Amazon Kindle Fire
Connectivity:
There is WiFi on both the devices, with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n.
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.
Winner: Nook Tablet
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.
Winner: Nook Tablet
Conclusion:
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.
