Just when you thought the tablet consumer was spoilt for choice, Barnes & Noble announced their entry into the world of tablets with the Nook HD and Nook HD+. Close on the heels of Amazon’s announcement of the new lineup of tablets under Kindle Fire HD, Barnes & Noble has brought out two variants of their Nook HD tablets. Let’s take a look at how the Nook compares with Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD tabs.
External looks: Both these tablets have a 7 inch HD screen. However, the B&N Nook HD has a slightly better resolution of 1440X900 pixels and 243 ppi, in comparison with the Kindle Fire HD’s 1280X800 pixel resolution and 216 ppi. Roughly the same size at first look, another advantage of the Nook HD is that it’s lighter than the Kindle Fire HD tab. Unfortunately, a big drawback of the Nook HD is the absence of a front-facing camera, which we think is quite essential in a tablet to be able to make video calls.
On the inside: The Nook HD has a slightly better 1.3GHz dual-core processor against Kindle Fire HD’s 1.2GHz dual-core version. Both tablets are capable of WiFi connectivity, but the cool thing about the Nook HD is that B&N is offering free WiFi in all their stores through their tab. Both the tablets run customized versions of Android 4.0, which hopefully can be upgraded to the Jelly Bean version shortly.
On the spec side, for $199, we’d say that front-facing camera notwithstanding, the Nook HD sure looks like it has a lot more to offer than Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD. But on the apps side, Amazon’s Appstore has over 50k apps on offer, while the B&N Appstore has just over 6k apps. The number of apps can gradually grow for sure, but we do wonder just how bad will users miss the front-facing camera in the Nook HD tab.
