In Fire vs Nook: It's Fire by a nose
— -- Who doesn't appreciate a good old-fashion brawl every now and again? There may be no bigger slugfest than what is taking place this week in 7-inch touch-screen tablets as the Kindle Fire from Amazon goes toe-to-toe with the Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble.
In one corner is Amazon, the Internet's leading retailer and champion of traditional E-Ink type electronic readers. In the other is Barnes & Noble, which despite its own online presence and lineup of e-readers is best known for its physical bookstores.
Behind the scenes, though, lurks tablet titleholder Apple, which has to take notice of this week's activities. Amazon is unleashing a body blow against the pricing status quo by introducing Fire at $199, $50 less than the Nook Tablet and, perhaps more important, $300 less than the Apple iPad 2.
Let me state upfront that neither the Fire nor Nook are as fully featured as the iPad 2 with its near 10-inch display. You won't find a camera on either device, which is only a big deal if you have designs on doing video chat. There's no Bluetooth or GPS either. Both Fire and Nook have far fewer apps than the iPad. The software isn't as fluid. And without 3G or 4G cellular, your connectivity options are limited to Wi-Fi.
Still, many buyers won't give a hoot about any of this — especially if what you have in mind for a tablet is reading (traditional strengths for Amazon and Barnes & Noble), music, movies, TV shows, browsing (including Adobe Flash sites) and playing casual games and checking e-mail. Despite some shortcomings I found both tablets appealing in my tests.
The fight between the companies largely comes down to which ecosystem you want to buy into because books you purchase from one provider are not compatible with the other. Amazon has a major advantage because of its vast digital offerings. Unlike its rival, Amazon has built-in music and movie stores, the latter providing 48-hour rentals along with sales options. If you subscribe to the $79 a year Amazon Prime service, you can freely stream more than 10,000 movies and TV shows and also borrow a Kindle book without due dates each month. Fire buyers can try Prime for free for a month. (As part of Prime, you also get two-day free shipping on products ordered through Amazon).
On Nook Tablet, Barnes & Noble is pushing available apps from the likes of Netflix, Hulu Plus and Pandora, but such apps are also available to Fire owners.
Where Barnes & Noble does have a bragging chip is in extra onboard storage—16 gigabytes versus 8GB. Plus, through a microSD slot, you can add up to 32GB extra on Nook Tablet. The advantage is meaningful to a point.
Amazon's counters that all the digital media you purchase through the company — apps, music, videos, and, of course, books— are held in the cloud for free. That's fine if you use Fire in a place that has Wi-Fi, but you'll have to make choices about what to download onto the device if you traveling and will be beyond reach of an Internet connection for an extended spell.
Still it was a pleasure to turn on Kindle Fire for the first time and have access to all the music I had previously stored on Amazon Cloud Drive, including songs that originally resided in iTunes.
You can stash either paperback sized tablet in your jeans or jacket pockets, a bit more easily with the shorter and slightly less wide Kindle Fire. At 14.6 ounces versus 14.1 ounces, the Fire is a tiny bit heavier though.
Both devices have impressive high-resolution (1024 by 600, 16 million colors) screens indoors with excellent viewing angles. Video looked good. But they're difficult to make out in sunshine. The Fire screen appeared to be more reflective.
Amazon's tablet bears a strong resemblance to BlackBerry PlayBook but that's where that comparison ceases. Judging by early sales it will be infinitely more popular than Research In Motion's tablet. The only physical button on Kindle Fire is a power button that is in a bad spot on the bottom of the device. I accidently turned the thing off a couple of times as I rested it on a table.
Meanwhile, Nook Tablet looks just like its predecessor Nook Color, which remains in the Barnes & Noble lineup. The familiar "n" button you press gives you a simple a way to return to your home screen, library, or device settings, or to shop, search or access a Web browser.
How apps stack up
Both Nook and Fire run on top of the Gingerbread version of Google's Android operating system. But for apps, you visit proprietary Amazon or Barnes & Noble stores, not the Android Market emporium found on other Android tablets. Amazon says it currently has more than 8,500 apps for Fire; the total is expected to go north of 10,000 within a few weeks. Barnes & Noble says it has more than 1,000 apps and will have "thousands" by year's end. Either way its way fewer than Apple has or for that matter what's in the Android Market.
It's a matter of personal preference and a close call, but I'd choose the Amazon home interface. I liked how the search box resided at the top of the screen, just above menu headings (Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, App and Web). Just below, you can flip through webpages, apps, album covers, and books via a carousel interface that reminds you of Apple's Cover Flow. You can park favorites at the bottom of the screen.
But I wished there was a physical equivalent like the "n" button on Nook Tablet.
At times the Fire screen was slow to respond to my taps and a little sluggish. Onscreen navigational controls didn't always appear immediately, especially inside third-party apps. I sometimes had to tap the screen and sometimes swipe up.
Amazon has made a big deal about its new Silk browser technology that taps into Amazon's cloud services to boost performance. The browser is supposed to get faster as it learns from the collective browsing behavior of Fire users. It's probably too soon for that to kick in, but for what it's worth I didn't experience anything approaching extraordinary speeds using the browser at this stage.
As the first color Kindle, children's books come alive as never before on an Amazon reader, a nice plus for parents. Children's books had already been an area on strength on the Nook Color device and on the iPad. Both companies sell children's books with read-aloud features. Barnes & Noble has introduced a clever feature that lets mom and dad or grandma and grandpa record their own voice reading a kid's story. The Kindle Fire lacks a microphone for this or any other purpose.
Amazon provides a couple of ways to read magazines on Fire, a page view that mimics the experience of reading an actual magazine and a text view that makes the type larger, plainer and easier to read at the cost of the original layout.
I found it easier to read magazines on the Nook, though in some cases I could read mags in both portrait and landscape views while in other cases I could only read in portrait.
Another Nook plus: free support in Barnes & Noble stores.
I didn't do a formal battery test on either device—Barnes & Noble says you'll get up to 11 ½ hours on Nook Tablet, Amazon says you'll get up to 8 on Fire. The claims seemed in line based on my usage. Of course, while Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire battery life is measured in hours and minutes, the battery life on the company's respective E Ink devices is measured in weeks if not a month or more.
I wouldn't elevate the Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet to knockout status just yet but they are solid and appealing. I'd give a split decision to Amazon because of a lower price and all its content. But by taking the fight to Apple, and each other, Barnes & Noble and Amazon have produced an ultimate winner, the consumer.
—
The bottom line
Amazon
Kindle Fire
$199, www.amazon.com
•Pro. Excellent price. Nice screen. Vast content available, includes built-in music and movie stores. Free cloud storage for Amazon content.
•Con. A little sluggish. Modest onboard storage. No microphone, camera or 3G.
Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet
$249, www.barnes andnoble.com
•Pro. Good price. Nice screen. Expandable storage. Free in-store retail support. Ability to record your voice reading kids' books. Interactive kids books.
•Con. Fewer apps. No built-in movie or music store. No camera or 3G.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com Follow @edbaig on Twitter