Some people want a tablet but don't want to shell out big bucks for it. For those frugal shoppers, this week was special, as it marked the release of the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire and the $250 Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Which is a better buy? I tried both for a wide range of tasks--reading books, buying and watching movies, listening to music, browsing the Web and answering email--and found that each has its own strengths and weaknesses. As a result, the right one for you may depend on what you want to do with it. (I pick my favorite for each task below.)


If you're in the market for a color e-reader, the Nook Tablet has the clear advantage, with its superior layouts and more readable, less glary display. But if you're committed to buying and renting media from Amazon, the Kindle Fire may be what you're looking for, despite its shortcomings.

To bring their tablets in at a relatively low price, Amazon and Barnes & Noble had to make sacrifices. As a result, neither tablet matches the versatility of the Apple iPad 2, or even the capabilities of a well-appointed Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.

Though the Nook Tablet has slightly better specs than the Kindle Fire (including 1GB of memory versus 512MB), they didn't deliver dramatically different performance, and both have their share of glitches.
But a tablet's overall performance may not be as important as itd ability to do what you want it to do well. Here's my take on which tablet is better at various tasks.


Winner: Nook Tablet