Kindle fire vs nook tablet

[acam333]

I am looking into buying a tablet under $180 and my two best choices are the nook tablet and the kindle fire. I have been comparing the two and am not sure which to get. I would like to get some opinions from people who own either device. Here is a comparison of the pros and cons of each device that I have made-
Nook tablet vs Kindle fire

-------------------------------------

-Nook tablet - $154.99 with $25 discount included with barnes and noble rewards membership ($179.99 otherwise)

Pros-

-Better quality, brighter, more responsive screen

-Micro SD card slot

-Able to be safely turned into a full android tablet without voiding warrantee with an androidfornook micro SD card ($19.99) which allows you to choose when you turn on your nook whether you want to boot it up into the nook os or android 2.3.7

-Cheaper by $5 (with barnes and noble membership which I have)

-More customizable

-Better battery life

-Strong if dropped, screen won't easily break or get scratched

Cons-

-Less apps available

-Must purchase music from another place, only apps, movies, books, and magazines are available in the nook store

-Slightly slower processor than kindle (1GHz dual core compared to 1.2GHz dual core)

-------------------------------------

-Kindle fire - $159.99 + additional $15 if ads are removed

Pros-

-Lots of apps available

-Slightly faster processor than nook (1.2GHz dual core compared to 1GHz dual core)

-Can purchase songs, movies, books, magazines, and apps from amazon, compared to only apps, movies, books, and magazines from nook store

Cons-

-Less bright, not as good picture quality

-Worse battery life

-not as customizable

-ads which to get rid of you have to pay $15

-Only 8GB, no SD card slot

-Cannot be safely turned into a full android tablet and if any attempt is made to turn into a full android tablet then the warrantee is voided

-more expensive by $5 not counting the $15 needed to remove ads

-not as strong as nook when dropped, screen will shatter if dropped onto a hard surface

 

[Little Darwin]

I haven't used the new Fire, I have the original... So some things may not be completely relevant for the Fire 2. Virtually all comments below should have the phrase "for me" appended, as it is only my opinion, and based on what I notice (or don't).

First, the 1.0 ghz on the original Fire does just fine, so I suspect the Nook would be fine with 1.0 ghz processor.

You can get music in a variety of places... if you like Amazon's selection, you could probably even buy from them on your PC and copy onto a Nook.

I think it is a weakness to have too many apps, instead of fewer high quality apps. I chuckle when people talk about the thousands of apps in the Android or iPhone or Amazon stores... How many different implementations of solitaire, or sudoku, or music players, or barcode scanners or picture viewers or file managers or email programs or flash card programs or browsers or whatever do you really need? When I search, I only see about 2-3 hundred different apps, and a lot of copy cats, some with minor variations...

With the Fire, I know it is pretty easy to side-load apps on the chance that there is something you can't get from Amazon (like an alternative launcher)... I am not sure about the Nook. As a note, with Go Launcher Ex side-loaded on the Fire, it looks just like a more typical Android device...

To determine whether the screen differences are really relevant to you, I would suggest going to look at both of them and see whether the Nook's display is actually noticeably different for you... I know that for me the difference between the Fire and Fire HD is minimal... but that is just me, others drool over the higher definition screen of the HD. I equate it to a time long ago when I was helping someone do some painting, and they agonized for days about which shade of off-white to paint their living room. For me, unless they are being viewed not side by side, I never notice the difference, but for some people it does matter...

Good luck on your decision, and enjoy whichever device you get.