The Kindle Fire vs.. The Nook Color

Among all technological devices we have seen that the e-Book readers are among the most purchased items.

 In this article we will dissect both the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Nobel Nook.

The beauty of the Kindle and Nook devices, over other technological “must-haves”–such as your latest smartphone, the latest 60-inch HDTV, or the PS3 Blu-ray  black hole is that the Kindle and the Nook, if utilized with discipline, will actually make you smarter. While everyone’s twiddling their iPhone or clicking away on their Blackberry Keyboards trying to slice digital fruit with their fingers, or playing Angry Birds, you and I can both be reading up on some of the old classics, or reading up on the latest political events (magazines are now being utilized in great number when being part of the Kindle or Nook experience), or brushing up on our social skills in a new “how-to” or “self-help” book.

I think I can speak for a majority of my readers that we gravitate towards the Kindle vs. Nook over the iPad vs Android Tablet precisely because we feel that need for real, unimagined productivity–rather than mindless distraction. We want an eReader, not a do-it-all device with hundreds and thousands of apps that will eventually waste our time. We are, in essence, the remnants of a reading population. (Now albeit the latest Kindles and Nooks have gone into competition with the iPads and Android Tablets and are now offering a lot of the similar features, but are still under the main purpose of being used as an eReader some may say).

But that doesn’t exclude my young readers. What does this mean? I hope it means that the age of reading is not yet over. I hope it means that young readers, despite all the technology that makes reading seam less important, still feel that reading is a HUGE necessity –whether on a piece of paper, a stone engraving, or a digital screen.

And maybe, just maybe, the world isn’t coming to an end just yet. Readers young and old read on!

The Kindle Fire and the Nook Color Tablet were always meant for more conscious consumers. Naturally, we all still want all the features and added gizmos and access to internet/apps as the high-priced iPad/Tab users have, yet without the extra cost.

As demanding consumers, we want more features for less money. We want vivid colors. We want access to the latest newspapers and magazines. We want to be able browse the web on the Go, be it at the airport, at the bookstore, or so on.

Basically, we want one nicely-sized gadget to allow us to browse the web, read our material, check our email, do some light research and keep us entertained–from anywhere.

(I’ll tell you guys which one I prefer at the end of this article, to avoid any bias)

Image via Wikipedia

What factors may you assess?

Design & Specs

Both, in my opinion, are amazing devices, holding either of them makes you feel as if you have an entire computer in the palm of your hand.

The Nook Color weighs slightly less, but in my opinion, this is not a big deterrence from one or the other. I personally liked how the Kindle Fire felt nicely in my hands, and felt that the Nook Color Tablet was “easier to drop”–that is of course if you know what that feeling feels like.

 The way the buttons were placed in the Kindle Fire is to some uncomfortable, but of course this is personal preference. There are no side volume control buttons. The speakers placement similarly was not thought out well, as it is easy to “muffle” the sound.

All in all, I still support the well-thought-out ergonomics of the Kindle Fire. But this is one category you may want to go and test out for yourself.

E-Book & Magazine Reading

In other Kindle vs Nook (eReaders) reviews, they are mostly weighed on how “well” we can read on the two devices. In this review, it is actually more difficult to determine this factor. This is mainly due to the type of screens, which introduced a lot of glare that is not apparent on e-reader screens that use the e-ink technology. Furthermore, we found that the color, in daylight, was very hard to see, almost impossible, due to the glare. But if you plan on being indoors frequently, this may not matter much to you. And of course, both Amazon and Barnes and Nobel never meant for these devices to be pure “eReaders” and we have to remind ourselves that readability may not be the most important factor of these tablets. But I must insert here though that I lean towards the older version Kindles because of the e-ink technology that is easy on the eyes

While reading is more difficult on both compared to the respective eReaders, I found that the Nook Color Tablet was easier to read on than the Kindle Fire. This includes any sort of text-based medium, such as textbooks, magazines, newspapers, internet content, instructions, as well as plain old e-books.

The readability of the Nook Color Tablet over the Kindle Fire mainly has to do with the different type of LCD screen that reduces glare on the Nook Tablet. Remember–the Nook Color (predecessor for the Tablet) has been released for quite some time, and B&N has had time to tweak this annoying feature, compared to the Kindle Fire which was just released Nov 2011.

Both devices have resolutions of 1024 x 600.

On the Nook, you have many more options in regards to text-sizes, for those with disabilities in vision–this may be an important factor.

Usability (especially for Tech Savvy Readers)

I defined “usability” as how easy it is to get going, right out of the box, browsing, listening to music, playing with apps, and using the device.

I especially liked the Kindle Fire in this category. I liked the way the menus were set up. While the Kindle Fire had very consistent menus and submenus, the Nook Tablet had menus that were a bit confusing and took some time getting used to. In short, they weren’t as “natural” and intuitive as the Kindle Fire menus.

The Kindle Fire also flips from portrait and landscape, depending on how you’re holding it.

The Nook doesn’t have this feature. So say you’re watching a clip in landscape mode. When you press “back” or go to a settings menu, you will have to flip the device upright to read what’s going on. Either that, or crook your neck sideways. Not major, but certainly annoying. And of course, in this age of technology, we demand that they cater to even our most minor preferences.

In all, I found the layout, the icons and the menus of the Kindle Fire more pleasurable to look at, and more intuitive to use.

Web Browsing & Connectivity (and Email)

The Kindle Fire web browser (called Amazon Silk) is much easier to use than the Nook Browser. The Nook browser seems a bit made up and not thought out. It seems as if B&N thought it was rarely going to be used. Ever use a cellphone’s browser, and be frustrated at how clunky and difficult it was to use compared to a computer browser? Well that’s the Nook browser compared to the Kindle Fire browser–difficult to use.

However–there have been many reports on how Amazon uses your browsing history to feed you advertisements and to keep track of your preferences with the Silk browser. Such similar reports were in big facebook news not too long ago. Amazon is a company that has attracted the negative attention of privacy activists on the internet, for this and many other reasons. Depending on your views on privacy on the internet, the Kindle browser may not be for you!

One more thing, which is in favor of the Nook tablet; the Nook type was much easier to read? This rings true for the browser text as well–Nook is still easier to read.

Email is pretty similar on both devices. I prefer the Nook a bit in this area. The Nook Gmail app is still in portrait mode however, but easier to use. You can add your individual email accounts and it will check your email at a set interval, but is not the greatest email client out there on either side.

Library & Available Media

Amazon, by far, is the best online media market out there today, in my opinion. You have access to streaming and downloaded movies, books, newspapers, magazines, anything you’d ever want to get your hands on. Amazon even conquers Apple iTunes in terms of what sort of media is available. Of course, you get front and center access to the wide Amazon media market through the Kindle Fire which by far may be its best endorsement.

The Nook does have a nifty little marketplace as well, called the “Shop” app. In this app, you can buy books, newspapers and apps from the Nook store, but predictably, the range of media you can buy is limited compared to Amazon. However, to access movies and music, B&N has partnered up with Hulu and Netflix, and other apps such as Pandora, Rhapsody and TuneIn provide the music and movie media. Of course, this is not as convenient as having to look in one place, as you would with the Kindle Fire. I found the Kindle Fire to be a bit easier to use and purchase media. Not to mention that the Amazon layout and shopping experience is an experience that cannot be competed against–I’m sure many of you have already shopped Amazon before and can agree that nothing really comes close.

Music & Audio

As I mentioned before, the speakers are poorly placed on the Fire, which distorts the music volume and makes it an inconvenient device to listen to loud music on. Of course, compared to the Nook speakers, which there is only ONE of, and is tiny, the Fire speakers still win out.

The music player on the Kindle Fire is beautiful to look at, automatically downloads covers, and is VERY well organized. You can create playlists; organize your list by artist, song, album, and all the usual categories. You can access the Amazon music store directly from the music player, so no fidgeting around for that song you all of a sudden remembered. A very well thought out feature that Amazon was smart enough to know was going to be a dealbreaker.

The Nook Tablet music player, on the other hand, is very much like the navigation and menus–very poorly thought out and not at all intuitive. The whole thing is still based in portrait mode of course, and since B&N doesn’t SELL music, you have to search for your tunes on Rhapsody and Pandora, which are fine for their OWN uses, but limit you in terms of options when it comes to your new Nook Color.

Pictures & Video Quality

Pictures look very nice on both the devices, but I still like the Nook’s color and sharpness. The video was also marginally better on the Nook, we noticed. So if you’re a big photo and video quality junkie, this category alone may swing you over to the Nook side.

I am not a big fan of Nook’s My Media app, which is the feature that organizes and lets you view your media. The Nook app is simply very disorganized and puts all your images into “one” folder essentially, making you scroll through them all, despite the fact that you can create folders. The thumbnails, in contrast to full-sized pictures, are hard to see and not well compressed. The entire app seems quickly made and lacks many essential features, such as an “send to friend” option.

The Kindle Fire app has very bad image quality, because it automatically compresses images and lowers resolution to fit the device. The Gallery app, what Kindle calls its image viewer, is practically useless (unless you don’t mind your automatically lowered picture quality) for this anti-”feature” alone. You have the option, of course, of downloading a third-party app for image viewing, but we don’t see why the Kindle Gallery app is so adamant on resizing images down to small sizes.

The Gallery app, however is much more easy to organize images in, which is one needed plus. The video quality of the Kindle Fire is quite similar to the Nook’s.

Apps

In today’s app-driven world, much of how we critique a device also falls on what the future holds for it. And in most cases, the future for a device is in the apps it hosts.

Both devices are limited to their parent company’s apps–Kindle can host the few Amazon-compatible apps, while Nook can host the few B&N-compatible apps. The wide range of Android apps, are for the most part, not available on either device. This is what we have expected, from reports prior to release, but a major downgrade from regular tablets like the iPad and Samsung Tab, which can host ANY apps compatible with their respective operating systems. Both Amazon and B&N have promised to provide more and more apps to Fire and Nook users in the coming months.

For the apps that we CAN download and use, it seems that the Nook’s function better, look better, and are integrated better. We found that the Kindle Fire apps look a bit fuzzy, as if they were not MEANT to be used on the Fire–since most Android apps are used on smartphones. The bigger screen of the Fire made the apps look out of place, but of course this is personal perspective as well. The Kindle Fire does let you load up 3rd party Android apps, but does not ensure that they will work.

Price

Right now, the Kindle Fire comes in at a very modest $199, while the Nook Tablet is priced at $250. Now I’m not in the business of telling you the obvious–that the Fire costs less than the Nook. What I am aiming to do is to weigh the pros and cons for both devices, and try and determine whether that extra $50 is worth it when buying the Nook, or whether the Kindle Fire is the best bang for your buck.

Pound for pound, I would say that the Nook Tablet is better in terms of apps, picture/video quality, and READABILITY, especially for people who need large-text, which the Kindle doesn’t provide. So if you have trouble seeing tiny letters, or are a big quality junkie the Nook very well may be worth the extra $50.

However, most of us doing reviews found that though the Kindle Fire is by no means a perfect device, there is a LOT of potential here. We liked the design, both physical and interface, and find that the device is a much easier to use, in terms of how many buttons we need to press to get something done.

So for many buyers this holiday season and beyond, I am confident to say that the Kindle Fire is great bang for its buck, even compared to the Nook Tablet, which is $50 more expensive, and definitely compared to the iPad and Tab, which are double the price.

I will leave you to decide but if it was up to me I would stick within the Amazon Kindle family. I would purchase one of the older version kindles just for my reading and then purchase the Kindle Fire for all the other entertainment add ons.

Image via Wikipedia