Inexpensive tablet wars: Amazon Kindle Fire vs. Barnes & Noble Nook Color

The challenge

Tablet market is abuzz with many fresh products. Since the release of Apple iPad original, the first formal tablet PC in the world, there has been several new products from various manufacturers. Quite recently, major companies have started to roll out cheap tablets aiming at the average customers. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony are three leading companies that unveiled inexpensive tablets respectively called Kindle Fire, Nook Color and Reader PRS-T1 in recent months. Here we compare two eReader-developed tablets from Amazon and Barnes & Noble – Kindle Fire and Nook Color. Just have a look to see which one is best for you.

Inexpensive tablet wars

Comparison attributes

1. Operating system

Both Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble play on Google Android. Kindle Fire is with a customized version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. Nook Color runs on Android 2.2 Froyo. Thanks to Gingerbread, Kindle Fire outdoes its Barnes & Noble competitor.

2. Display

Both tablets sport 7-inch multitouch displays with IPS technology. Seven-inch display seems to be the ideal size to read contents. And, it makes a device more portable, indeed. Users who travel a lot will adore Amazon Fire and Nook Color. The displays provide a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels at 169 ppi and 16 million colors.

3. Dimensions

Kindle Fire is with a dimension of 190 mm x 120 mm x 11.4 mm and Nook Color is with 205 mm L x 127 mm x 12.2 mm. The former one weighs just at 0.91 pounds and the latter weighs at 0.99 pounds. Amazon tablet wins here with less weight, height, width and density.

4. Processor

Kindle Fire runs on a state-of-the-art dual-core OMAP TI 4 processor, while Nook Corner is with TI’s ARM Cortex-A8 processor that clocks at 800MHz.

5. Camera

Both the tablets are free of cameras. It was a bit shocking to the analysts that Amazon missed camera on its much-awaited Kindle tablet. But Amazon seems to be finding its Kindle Fire as an advanced color eReader, reviewers suggest.

6. Storage

Kindle Fire and Nook Color are with 8GB on-device memory. But you have an up-to 32GB expandable microSD slot on Nook Color. It is not on Kindle Fire, where you have an option to store your contents on Amazon Cloud. Amazon might have dropped microSD so as to popularize its cloud storage option.

7. RAM

Nook Color is powered by a 512MB RAM. There is no word on the RAM capacity of Kindle Fire.

8. Connectivity

You have Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n on both the tablets.

9. Media formats supported

Kindle Fire supports file formats Kindle (AZW), PDF, TXT, DOC, DOCX and Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)). Barnes & Noble’s eReader tablet also supports key text formats like PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, MP3, MP4, PPS, AAC, DOCM, XLSM, TXT, PPTM, PPSM, XLX, PPTX, DOCX and image formats like JPG, GIF, BMP and PNG.

10. Battery life

You can continuously read up to 8 hours on Kindle Fire on a single recharge. The tablet supports 7.5 hours of video playback with wireless off. Nook Color also has 8 hour battery life on a single recharge without wireless connections.

11. Price

Pricing is one thing that outshines Kindle Fire over Nook Color and most of its mainstream tablet rivals. Amazon has stunningly priced its Kindle at $199, while Barnes & Noble sells its tablet for $249.

12. Apps

According to Amazon, Kindle Fire is with thousands of popular apps and games. Nook Corner is not immensely rich with apps. Both the devices support most of Android apps.

Winner

At a glance, Amazon Kindle Fire is the winner in this comparison. It is because the device is the most recent and sophisticated. Amazon’s pricing, vast collection of contents, Android Gingerbread and many other things make its Kindle Fire a perfect product.

Verdict

Amazon Kindle Fire is to enter the market on 15, November this year. The Kindle tablet from Amazon has been much-touted as an iPad killer. But once realized it is quite clear that the device is not competent enough for the task. However, it seems like that Kindle Fire is much capable to well face off its rivals like Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color and Sony’s upcoming Reader PRS-T1.