Comparison: Nook Tablet vs Kindle Fire

Here is a comparison of the major features of Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook Tablet computer and Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire:

Price: The Nook Tablet costs $249; the Kindle Fire, costs $199.

Connectivity: Both tablets connect to the Internet only through Wi-Fi.

Screen size: Both tablets have displays that measure 7 inches diagonally. That's about three times the size of an iPhone screen and half the size of an iPad screen.

Software: Both run modified versions of Google Inc.'s Android software. Neither one has direct access to Google's Android Market for third-party applications; Amazon and Barnes & Noble run their own stores.

Apps: Barnes & Noble says there are about 1,000 third-party applications available for the Tablet. Amazon has nearly ten times as many.

Storage: The Nook Tablet has 16 gigabytes of storage plus a memory-card slot. Of the built-in memory, all but 1 gigabyte is reserved for content bought from Barnes & Noble. The Kindle Fire includes 8 gigabytes of internal storage and no memory-card slot.

Battery life: Barnes & Noble claims up to 9 hours of video on the Nook Tablet, Amazon says 7.5 hours on the Kindle Fire.

Thickness: They're nearly identical: the Nook tablet is 0.48 inches thick, while the Kindle Fire is 0.45 inches.

Weight: Again, nearly identical. The Nook Tablet weighs 14.1 ounces, the Kindle Fire half an ounce more.

Movies: Both come with apps from Netflix and Hulu, which provide streaming movies and TV shows to subscribers. The Kindle Fire also provides access to downloadable and streaming movies from Amazon.

Barnes & Noble unveils Nook Tablet, priced $249

Barnes & Noble unveiled a $249 Nook Tablet just ahead of the crucial holiday shopping season in a bid for more of the growing markets for e-books and tablet computers.

Both Barnes & Noble Inc. and Amazon are challenging Apple Inc. and its dominant and much more expensive iPad for a piece of the holiday pie. The Nook Tablet arrives just weeks after Amazon.com released its Kindle Fire tablet, which sells for $199. Barnes & Noble said its device offers more memory and longer battery life.

The book seller cut the prices on its existing e-readers. The Nook Color is now $199, down from $239, and the Nook Simple Touch black-and-white reader, which has no browser, is now $99, down from $139. The Nook Tablet will be in stores and shipped to customers on Nov. 17. Like the Nook Color, it has a 7-inch color touch-screen.

Unlike Amazon, Barnes & Noble doesn't offer streaming services, but the Nook includes preloaded apps from Hulu and Netflix Inc. that allow users to subscribe to stream movies and TV shows.

Since introducing its first Nook in 2009, Barnes & Noble has spent heavily on its e-book readers and e-bookstore. As people change the way they read, the New York-based company also faces tough competition from discounters and online retailers in the market for traditional books. Barnes & Noble has struggled to turn a profit, and its much smaller rival, Borders Group Inc., sought bankruptcy protection and then liquidated its assets this year.

The Nook Tablet weighs less than a pound, has a battery that enables nine hours of video watching and comes with 16 gigabytes of memory and an SD slot to add more.

Another selling point: free customer service at the more than 700 Barnes & Noble stores, CEO William Lynch said.

If you bought a Kindle and had a question about it, Lynch asked, "Where would you go, Amazon's headquarters in Seattle?"

Apple's iPad, now the king of tablets, starts at $499 for a bare-bones version and runs as much as $829.

Analysts at Gartner Inc. predict that three of every four tablets sold this year will be an iPad. Apple has sold nearly 29 million since they first came out in April 2010. Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com Inc. generally do not release sales figures.

The Nook Tablet will be sold online, in Barnes & Noble stores and by a variety of other retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Staples and Fry's.

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.

Nook Tablet to be unveiled Monday

When Amazon unveiled its first tablet, the Kindle Fire, in September, most tech experts and analysts predicted it would be the first real challenger to Apple's iPad.

Now, before the Kindle Fire has even debuted, Engadget is reporting that a familiar foe is also entering the tablet market - Barnes & Noble.

The company has invited journalists and analysts to a news conference in New York November 7, where everyone expects Barnes & Noble to unveil the Nook Tablet.

As of now, the Nook is an e-reader, but one with a lot of different versions. Some are black and white, some are color, some offer Internet access and others don't.

The tablet is expected to be a lot like the Nook Color Reader, though one would expect there to be some more features.

Like the Kindle Fire, this tablet seems to be reusing a popular brand name - Nook - and will have a seven-inch screen.

According to various tech blogs, it will be priced at $249 - $50 more than the Kindle Fire.