Last holiday season Barnes and Noble really shook things up with it’s new Nook Color, a color touch ebook reader. Now it’s Amazon’s turn to shock everyone with it’s new Kindle Fire. This 2011 holiday season and beyond is going to have a lot of people wondering, which is the better choice? Let’s compare the new Kindle Fire vs Nook Color side by side and see which comes out on top.
Kindle Fire vs Nook Color Video- Our Hands On Comparison
Click to visit Amazon.com For the Kindle Fire
Click to visit Barnes and Noble for the Nook Color
Kindle Fire Vs. Nook Color
After seeing the above video, it’s pretty apparent the Kindle Fire looks to react to the user’s touch much smoother and faster, and it looks to make nice intuitive sense.
Let’s compare the Kindle Fire vs. Nook Color features side by side now. Here’s a convenient chart to quickly see the differences between the two devices.
| Kindle Fire | Nook Color | |
 |
 |
|
| Price | $199.00 | $199.00 |
| Memory | 8 GB (Free Cloud Backup/Overflow) |
8 GB |
| Expandable Memory? |
No | Yes |
| # of Apps Available | 16,640 | 729 |
| App Store | Kindle Apps For Android |
Nook Color Apps |
| Screen Size | 7 Inches | 7 Inches |
| Screen Resolution | 1,024 x 600 | 1,024 x 600 |
| 3G? | No | No |
| Battery Life | 8 Hours | 8 Hours |
| Browser | Amazon Silk | Customized Android |
| Camera? | No | No |
| Device Dimensions | 7.5″ x 4.7″ x .45″ | 8.1″ x 5″ x .48″ |
| Content | Amazon | Barnes and Noble |
| Wireless Delivery Of Content Outside the U.S.? |
Yes | No |
| Availability? | Available Now | Available Now |
Kindle Fire Vs Nook Color- Features
One can see there are some obvious differences when looking at the above chart. Specifically, a Kindle Fire user will be able to enjoy many more apps on the device, free cloud storage, much more media availability, and faster web browsing if Silk is all it’s hyped up to be. However, will the “Cloud” be well received by customers? We’ll see.
Browser Winner: Amazon’s Silk Browser
Amazon’s browser will certainly be faster than Barnes and Noble’s customized Android browser. Amazon has promised ultra fast web browsing, taking advantage of their EC2 Cloud service to help load essential pieces of a page faster. If you want a technical explanation, you can visit Amazon.com to see their Silk Browser Video. However, just taking a look at the video above shows the difference in browsers.
The Silk Browser for Fire is more intuitive, faster, and streams videos with flawlessness. The Nook Color browser is clunky and slow. Streaming videos play great audio, but the video is choppy every time we try it here at Tech WHAM.
Memory Winner: Kindle Fire
People are going to dislike the “Cloud” notion, and will fight having all of their content only accessible when connected to the internet, but that’s not a perfect explanation of the situation when you see how the Kindle Fire actually works.
One can toggle in between “Cloud” and “Device” functions to swap content on or off the device. That means if there is ever a point in time when the user is running out of space for a movie, book, or other piece of digital content, they just need to put something on the cloud to make room. Next time the user is within wi-fi range, they can swap the content out for new on the cloud.
Some, like me, will embrace this new technology. “The Cloud” seems a good idea, especially for Kindle Fire users, because you never have to worry about memory, for no extra cost. Cloud backup comes free. For non-Amazon content, users will get 5 GB free usage on the Cloud Drive, then will have to pay a subscription after that. One example of this is a 20GB subscription for $20 per year.
Price Winner? Both are now $199.00.
So Which Is Best? Kindle Fire or Nook Color?
It’s apparent that when you compare the Kindle Fire vs Nook Color, Amazon’s device offers more for the same price. Our assessment is the user interface, reaction time of the device, web browser, and overall user experience is just better on the Amazon Kindle Fire. Of course, you may want to check out our Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire page to see how the Tablet fairs differently. In the end, both are going to be very popular devices this holiday season. Both the Kindle and Nook devices have loyal fan bases.
Ebook Readers, Kindle Fire vs Nook Color