Amazon Kindle vs Motorola Xoom vs Nook Tablet

It has been almost a year since Apple's iPad 2 was released, and so far no Android tablet has even come close to matching its sales records. The $399 Asus Transformer sold out briefly, due to material shortages, but the first "real" Honeycomb-powered Android tablet - the Xoom - sat on shelves for months before having its $799 price slashed dramatically. The Xoom was widely perceived as bulky and unreliable, and it had very few tablet apps compared to the iPad.

Perhaps the most successful of this year's non-iPad tablets was the Barnes and Noble Nook Color, a half-sized and half-priced gadget which was basically an e-reader with a web browser and apps. Now a new version of the Nook is on its way, and Amazon is creating its own Kindle Fire tablet with a similar price point and specs. Meanwhile, the Xoom is returning as well, in regular and "Media" editions.

The Kindle Fire:
This is the one gadget that abundant details are already available for. Amazon.com's Kindle Fire page shows that it will be a 7-inch tablet (half the size of the iPad), which will cost $199 when it comes out on Nov. 15. Power users and performance addicts probably won't be impressed by its bare-bones specs; it mostly serves as a way to buy books, games, and apps from Amazon's online store, plus movies and music besides.

Amazon Prime members will be able to stream "over 10,000" movies and television shows for free, on the Kindle Fire. However, its "accelerated" Silk web browser has raised some privacy concerns.

The Nook Tablet:
An early leak which may or may not be accurate, shows that the upcoming "Nook Tablet" will still cost $50 more than the Kindle Fire but will have twice the on-board storage and considerably better specs.

Its libraries of books and apps will probably be smaller than Amazon's, and it will likely lack any equivalent to Amazon's Cloud Drive or music and movie stores. The Nook Color tied in to in-store Barnes and Noble specials, though, such as Angry Birds downloadable content and free browsing. The Nook Tablet will probably have similar offers available.

The Xoom 2:
Details are still sketchy about Motorola's upcoming tablet, and it's not even clear if it will be available in the U.S. - all of the ads and promotions leaked so far are for the UK. Both the Xoom 2 and the Xoom 2 Media Edition apparently borrow their styling from the Droid RAZR , and will have prices roughly on par with the iPad 2's. The Media Edition will be smaller, at 8.2 inches, and both devices will run Android Honeycomb, although Ice Cream Sandwich will be available later on.

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