B&N has released a new Nook to compete with Amazon’s Kindle
Fire. The 8 GB Nook looks exactly like the 16 GB version however internally there
are quite a bit of differences. They have reduced the amount of on-board memory
by half and reduced the RAM by half as well.
The design of the 8 GB Nook will be the same as the 16 GB
version. I will be honest at first I did not get the design and why it was so
big. The screen looks small with such a larger border. However when I picked up
and used it I understood why they chose that design. You can easily grip it
with one hand and not cover up the screen. Typically with other tablets you have to palm
the back to not cover your viewing area.
What is also great is that they added buttons to the design.
The nook has a power, volume, and
home buttons. The kindle fire only has a
power button that is really hard to find. On this aspect they have really
knocked the baseball out of the ballpark. I am not sure how the designers of
the Fire could have left out such an important feature.
The user experience is very different from that Fire. Nook
gives you more options to customize it and make it you own. As with the Fire
and iPad they seem to give it to you the way they want. This is something that
has always turned me away from Apple products. Ever since Android came out I have
enjoyed customizing everything to my needs.
Memory between the Nook and Fire are very different. They
both come with 8 GB of memory. The Nook also has an expansion slot so you can
add another 32 GB of memory. Having that much memory on board is great especially
if you are traveling and do not have a Wi-Fi connection. The Fire is very
limited as it only has 8 GB of memory on board. You do have the ability to use
Amazon could drive which gives you 5 GB for free and up 1000 GB if you’re
willing to pay $1000.00 a year. That is great until you cannot connect to a
network.
One thing I really wish they would have used for the screen
is Gorilla glass. Although the border seems to provide some protection it just
seems inevitable that you will hit screen and crack it. I also do not like the
fact that they cut the RAM by half. I am curious to see how much lag there will
be because of this. The 16 GB version of the Nook Tablet seemed a lot faster
than the Fire but with cut in RAM they might be dead even.
So many choices that are given to you that it can be hard to
choose. I have provide a link to B&N website on the 8 GB Nook Tablet check
out it’s specs and see if the right for you.
