Today’s tablet market is flooded with the low-cost Android tablets but when it comes to the most affordable tablets, only two matters there i.e. Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet. Which one is a worth to buy? Both tablets have a broad range of tasks--reading books, browsing the Web, buying and watching movies, listening to music, answering email and more--but each tablet has its own strengths and weaknesses. Really, it is hard to choice between Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire! Follow the side-by-side comparison of both these tablets to select the best one. Both tablets match with each other nearly in all the important categories and thus make it very difficult to decide the perfect fit for your lifestyle.

Each tablet has some unique points which are sufficient to distinguish them clearly. However, ultimate decision can be made by considering the preference or personal needs of users only. For example, if they favor to a color e-reader, then Nook Tablet is perfect for them with its superior layouts and less glary display; on the other hand Kindle Fire may be appealing for its buying and renting media from Amazon. Each tablet has some pleasing points as well as some criticism points to give range of options to buyers. Users just have to go through the real list of tech specs to make the right decision while purchasing. Following point to point comparison may be helpful to you to make selection from the two most attractive tablets: Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet.

Reading

Superior: Nook Tablet

If we compare the screen of the both tablets, our work becomes easy as both have same screen size and resolution i.e. 7 inch color touch screen and 1024 by 600 pixels resolution. However, the screen of the Nook Tablet is less reflective than Kindle Fire; the LCD bonded to the glass mitigates reflection and boosts sharpness and contrast. At rendering text, Nook Tablet is the overall clear winner as text on the Nook Tablet looks crisper than on the Kindle Fire. Both gadgets provide 8 font-size options but the sizes on the Nook are more functional.

On both readers, reading mode is fairly similar; you touch or swipe in a border to advance, while tapping a page in the direction of the center will introduce a menu where you can amend things such as text size. Nook offers few more options here such as sharing passages through social means and adjusting the brightness. On both tablets, holding down on a word pop up options to add notes, highlight or check out the definition.

The Nook Tablet has great selection of children's books as well as it presents them better than the Kindle Fire. Also, it contains a read-aloud feature, where you can record your own soundtrack or use a prerecorded voice to read the picture book. On the Nook Tablet, many kid's books include page animations: tap a particularly coded spot, the illustrations move. The Kindle Fire versions of the same books are deficient in this feature.

Overall, the Nook Tablet functions better for mass-market books, trade books, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, and children's books compared to the Kindle Fire.

Physical Design

Superior: Nook Tablet

Nook Tablet is the better looking between the two due to its display and physical volume buttons. Both tablets are sturdy in overall build as well as comfortable to hold with one hand but the Nook Tablet’s soft touch coating simply fends off dirt and debris considerably better than the Amazon Kindle Fire.

The Nook Tablet’s VividView display is fully laminated that result in better clarity, viewing angles, and decreased glare. The Nook Tablet is superior due to the reason that the display of Amazon Kindle Fire tends to cast a bluish color when it’s slanted to various degrees.

Navigation

Superior: Kindle Fire

Kindle Fire’s pleasing, consistent design and menus makes it easier to move around than the Nook Tablet as you can orient it in either landscape or portrait mode. When you hit the bottom of the Fire's screen, consistent navigation elements for home, menu, back, and search options pop up. As well, with Amazon's cloud locker in Fire, it is very easy to differentiate between content stored on the tablet and content stored in. Whereas, navigation menus of the Nook Tablet are locked into portrait mode and so the effect can be grating as you go from content displayed in landscape mode to menus i.e. in the portrait mode.

Multitasking

Superior: None

Most forms of the multitasking are not handled adequately by both tablets. While reading, you can play music in the background but when you go from one app to another, the music app gets closed out by these tablets rather than suspending it. Neither Nook Tablet nor the Kindle Fire makes it clear to users whether they're able to true multitasking in the background. Few apps such as Pandora and the native music player appear in the bottom status display however their behavior is by no means reliable.

As a result, both tablets are considerably inferior to other Android tablets when it comes to the multitasking capabilities.

Personalization

Superior: Nook Tablet

Both tablets have Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system which provides you far less freedom to tweak the apps, shortcuts, and widgets on your home screens. Yet, the Nook Tablet offers many more personalization options than the Kindle Fire. To any of the three home screens, you can add your favorite image as wallpaper. As well, you can move periodicals, favorite books, or apps to sit on the home screen, including layering icons on top of one another.

Home screen of the Amazon's Kindle Fire is fairly locked down so you can't choose a lock screen image or a background wallpaper of your own, as well as you have no control over what becomes visible in the central carousel. Central carousel covers everything from periodicals and books to music and movies to Web pages and apps --and you can't remove any of them. The Nook Tablet offers more options to display your content in its libraries; most notably is a 'My Stuff' tab that leads to your own bookshelves.

Renting or Buying Books, Video, and Music

Superior: Kindle Fire

On the Kindle Fire, Amazon's music and video store is very easy to use same as the iTunes on Apple products. The Kindle Fire makes things easier to get books, music, and periodicals, and streaming or downloading videos. Nook Tablet's Shop app also allows you to purchase periodicals, books, and apps from the Nook Store but it doesn't let you to buy video or music content; instead, it offers apps that allow you to stream content to the tablet. According to Barnes & Noble, it will have rental and download services ready to walk off live early next year.

Apps

Superior: None

In terms of Apps, neither Barnes & Noble’s Nook nor Amazon’s Kindle is best, not only in how many are available, but also in how good they are & how attractive they look on the device. If you desire the hottest Android apps right away, neither tablet is a good choice as they are limited to the apps obtainable in the small app stores run by Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Barnes & Noble and Amazon are trying to expand their app stores' holdings; however neither will come within an inch of the number of apps that Google Market provides for Android 2.3 or Apple for iOS. During the launch of Kindle, Amazon said that it will offer above 8500 apps for the Kindle Fire, and it persists to add apps daily. As per the Barnes & Noble, it has more than a 1,000 apps, and it looks forward to include "thousands" by year's end.

Music Player

Superior: Kindle Fire

Coming to the music player, the Kindle Fire allows you to sort music by artists, playlists, albums, and songs. As well, navigating through the music stored on tablet and through the tunes stored in Amazon's cloud is simple. Meanwhile, the music player of the Nook Tablet is ineptly designed and awkward to use; trying to find music can be frustrating as the player is locked into vertical orientation like the tablet's menus. Though Nook Tablet comes preloaded with optimized versions of Rhapsody, TuneIn Radio Pro, and Pandora, it doesn't include built-in store for purchasing individual music tracks.

Speakers

Superior: Kindle Fire

Amazon’s Fire has two stereo speakers that built along the same edge of the Kindle Fire. They sound fairly decent for music. The Nook Tablet has a single monaural speaker put on its back where audio sounded metallic and thin.

Storage Capacity:

Superior: Kindle Fire

When it comes to storage, the Nook offers stretchable storage capability; you can use a micro SD card in Nook to extend the storage capacity up to 32 GB that can get occupied after a restricted storage. Though the Nook has a microSD slot, currently it is offering only 1GB of its built-in storage to non-B&N-purchased content. Conversely, Kindle Fire provides 8 GB of built-in storage and it can be expanded to unlimited storage capacity owing to Amazon’s cloud technology. Hence, the Kindle is superior to the Nook in terms of storage capacity.

Performance

Superior: Nook Tablet

Both gadgets contain 1GHz dual-core processors, but the Nook is superior in terms of performance with its 1GB of RAM to the Fire's 512MB. These both tablets have enough battery life to last throughout the day. On the Nook, the HD playback picks up subtle imagery similar to patterns on ties, which were largely absent on the Fire.

Supported file formats

B&N says the Nook Tablet supports:

• Documents: EPUB (Adobe DRM or DRM-free), PDF, DOC, XLS, TXT, PPT, DOCM, PPTM, XLSM, PPSX, DOCX, PPSM, XLX, PPTX
• Images: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Audio: MP3, AMR, AAC, WAV, OGG (audio Codecs MP3, AMR, AAC, LPCM, OGG Vorbis)
• Video: MP4, Adobe Flash, 3G2 MKV, 3GP, WEBM (H.264, MPEG-4, H.263, VP8)

And, according to Amazon its Kindle Fire is compatible with following content formats:

• Documents: Kindle (AZW), PRC (natively), unprotected MOBI, PDF, TXT, DOC, DOCX
• Images: JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP
• Audio: MP3, WAV, Audible, MIDI, OGG, Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX), non-DRM AAC
• Video: MP4, VP8, Adobe Flash

Price:

To get all these facilities, you have to pay near about same amount to buy any of the two tablets. The Amazon’s Kindle is $50 cheaper than the Barnes & Noble’s Nook. For Kindle Fire, the price range fixed is $199 while the base price of the Nook Tablet is $249. Those people who want to cut $50 from the Nook price can still pick up last year's Nook Color.

Conclusion:

Eventually, this is a tight race between the two gadgets. In terms of Specs, the Nook Tablet beats the Kindle Fire, but the Kindle comes out at the forefront on Amazon's pricing, third party apps and extensive ecosystem surrounding multimedia content. In terms of hardware, the Nook is better but on the other hand, the Kindle Fire is also better to receive support from 3rd party developers. It is clear that some features of the Nook are better than Kindle and some features of Nook have beaten the Kindle Fire. So, the choice is yours; you can buy any of the two devices as per need and the features of your choice.

Nook Tablet Vs Kindle Fire: Comparison Table

Kindle Fire vs Nook Tablet: Comparison video from Youtube:

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