Asking yourself, "Should I buy a Kindle Fire or a Nook Tablet?" The two hot eReaders / tablets this holiday season are Amazon's new Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's appropriately named Nook Tablet. But deciding which one makes the better stocking stuffer can be a difficult choice for consumers. The Kindle Fire cashes in at $199 dollars while the Nook Tablet rings up at $249 dollars. So what does the extra fifty dollars get you with the Nook?
Kindle Fire & Nook Tablet Tech Specs
The two devices are comparable in size and weight. The Kindle Fire measures in at 4.7 inches wide, 7.5 inches high, with a width of 0.45 inches. The Nook Tablet is slightly bigger, at 5 inches wide, 8.1 inches high and 0.48 inches thick. Surprisingly, despite being slightly bigger the Nook Tablet weighs in at 14.1 oz, .5 ounces lighter than the Kindle Fire at 14.6 inches.
Both devices will serve equally well for one handed reading, whether its in your favorite reading chair or in crowded public transit.
They stack up identical in display size and processing muscle. Both devices feature 7 Inch IPS Displays with 1024x600 resolution at 169 pixels per inch. Both devices also run on a TI OMAP 4 Dual Core 1Ghz processor.
Nook Tablet has more Memory & RAM
When it comes to physical memory and RAM, however the items start to diverge. The Kindle Fire comes stock with 512 MB of RAM and 8 Gigs of hard drive space with no SD Card slot. The Nook Tablet comes with 1Gig of RAM and 16 MB's storage with the option for SD Card expansion of up to 32 Gigs of external storage space.
Our Pick?
Amazon's Kindle Fire
While the Nook Tablet may boast more memory, it'll be harder to fill as the Amazon App and Book store is much more mature than the Barnes & Noble Nook Apps. In short you'll find greater volume and greater variety of books with the Amazon Kindle Fire than the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Both budget tablets would make fine gifts, but paying the extra fifty dollars for the Nook only gets you more memory and less Apps and Books. Until the Nook library and Apps are given time to bloom, you'll get more use out of the cheaper Kindle Fire.
