Quilter's Guide To The Nook Tablet Or Kindle Fire

I picked up the Nook Tablet last week and being the electronic nerd I purchased the Kindle Fire last night.  Neither one is better than the other after playing around, but your decision should be based on what you plan on using your Tablet or Fire for.  Everyone in the tech industry seems to go on about the memory, size, and other technical specs, but I'm giving my review as a normal boring person.

My true advice is don't bother with either and go get an iPad.  It's more versatile and truly worth every penny.  That's one purchase I don't regret.  Nothing beats the iPad.  Nothing.


I really have the Nook because my husband picks out better books that I do.  He's into history, politics, sci-fi, and everything else.  I can go into a book store and find myself lost in choices.  He's got 400 books to choose from.

I have a Kindle because I like romance novels and quilting books.  He doesn't want anything like that on his Nook, archived or not.

If you want quilting e-books, get the Fire.  Amazon has so many books to choose from and at much cheaper prices.  Barnes and Noble wanted 32 dollars for a book.  Amazon wanted 21.99.

Both readers play your own movies.  You will need 3rd party software to convert your movies into a readable format.  You need the SD micro card for the Nook to load a movie in.  You use the "Gallery" app on the Fire.  I refused to pay 1.99 an episode for my "Thundercats" TV show via Kindle when I paid a few bucks for the DVD.  It was easy to convert it over and watch on each tablet.  Volume sucks on both readers so it's hard to hear.    

If you want better customizing of your books, get the Nook.

Marvel Comics has worked out a deal with the Nook.  DC has done that with the Fire.  That really sucks if you like comic books like my DH.  I told him I didn't have a problem if he downloaded comic books on my Fire.

User Interface


I tried to get some pics, but the glare wasn't helping.  Once you push the power button the Fire, you get this large bookshelf with oversized apps or books.  It's a truly ugly home page.  You can't scale it down and when I tried to change the order of the books, it just spins through them.  Come on Amazon.  You could have done better than that.

When I clicked on a book and hold it, I have two choices, Add to favorites, or remove from the device.

With the Nook, you push the "N" and it opens up with whatever screen saver you've put in (I have an animated fish tank) and your recent books are stored at the bottom in a nice neat size.  If you hold on one of the books/apps it asks  if you want to open it, view details, recommendations and if you want to remove it from the home page.

Once you get a book loaded, you can go to the menus by tapping.  You can change fonts, size, margins, background color, line spacing.  The Kindle has three background colors, gray, back and Sepia.  The Nook has Day, night, gray, Butter, Mocha, and Sepia.

When it comes to navigating your way through menus, the Kindle is easier because it doesn't have all the menus to go through.  However; when I do need that "N" I know where it is.  Having to tap all the time to go the home menu on the Fire was annoying at times.

I couldn't find shelves on the Kindle.  On the Nook I could add bookshelves, label them and easily move those books into them.

Internet:  


Both are fast and load up nicely.  Buying books are easy on both sites.  Amazon.com is easier to navigate through and the prices are so much better for books.  There are more apps.  Barnes and Noble website can be a pain to find what you want and some books are almost as much as the regular book.

If you are into Facebook, you cannot chat with either device.  That sucks.  I think that's an Android problem, not the devices themselves.  I can't chat on my Droid either.


It's a hard choice because of my needs.  The nook is better with customizing and I like it more than the Kindle.  I like to watch movies, but don't want Hulu+ or Netflix.  I have Amazon Prime and can watch what I like, whenever I want, but the Nook has clearer, more vibrant colors.  I can buy so many quilting books via Amazon and books are cheaper.

Get the iPad if you want the best.  Even if you despise Apple, you really get what you truly want.

*Edited*  You can hack into the Nook without messing with anything to ruin it.  I was able to sideload Amazon's app store and the the Kindle reader.  It's more complicated to get into the Android Market and I don't buy apps that much so I wasn't worried about it.

If you really only want to read books and not deal with the internet, get one of the simple readers that each offer for a great price.  I like e-ink and not dealing with the glare of a glass screen.

I probably haven't helped, but this is my first impressions with both tablets.  Both have really nice features and I wish I could put it all into one tablet.