Major book chain Barnes & Noble has joined the technology battle by releasing the Nook HD. The popular bookstore's decision to include more electronic items that actually are also considered rivals of its traditional books is an indicator that bricks and mortar stores need to accept and take part in the technology battle to survive financially.

Barnes & Noble, a book retailer in the United States and known to have several chain of bookstores around the country, sells magazines, newspapers, DVDs, graphic novels, gifts, games, and music aside from the usual books. Besides these products, many of its stores offer Starbucks Coffee inside.

The Nook and Kindle Fire HD are good tools to read ebooks since it offers consumers, particularly those with eye problems, the option to increase the size of fonts, which is a limitation and frequent complaint about traditional printed books whose small print strain the eyes of older readers.

The two tablets are both thin, light weight with high resolution for viewing and reading, HD screen for movies and TV shows, and tons of online material available for the user.

Nook HD 7

This 7-inch tablet features high resolution display and up to 10.5 hours of use for a single charge, high speed web browsing, e-mail and calendar synching capability, parental control for kid's safe viewing and usage, cinema-like sound, HD for movies and TV shows, and Nook Cloud which stores all the user's purchases for free.

It weighs 315g, with a height of 7.65", width of 5" and thickness of 0.43" only. The display consists of 1440x900 pixel resolution, 720p HD (243ppi), and fully laminated screen with no air gaps to reduce glare and make possible clear viewing in extreme angles.

For memory, Nook HD 7" supports 8GB internal with 5GB of it is available for the user and expansion slot for the microSD card.

In terms of entertainment, this tablet has built-in Wi-Fi connectivity and free access to Wi-Fi in all Barnes & Noble stores, 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, 30-pin port charging connector to a computer (HDMI compatible), and multimedia codec support for mp3, mp4, m4a, 3gp, aac, flac, wav, amr, jpeg, gif, png, bmp, pdf, docx, and many more. The battery lasts up to 10.5 hours of reading and up to 9 hours of movie viewing.

Technical Details

Nook HD 7"

Kindle Fire HD 7"

Display

7", 720p, 1440x900 (243pp), fully laminated screen

7", 10-point touch, 720p, 1280x800, advanced polarizing filter, anti-glare technology

Size and Dimensions

7.65"(h), 5"(w), 0.43"(thickness)

7.6"(h), 5.4"(w), 0.4"(thickness)

Weight

315g

395g

Storage

8GB or 16GB internal with microSD expansion

16GB or 32Gb internal

Battery Life

Up to 9-10.5 hours

Up to 11 hours

Audio

Cinema like audio technology with high quality dual-stereo speakers

Dolby audio engine

Supported Formats

Audio: MP4, M4A, 3GP, AAC, MP3, FLAC, WAV, OGG, AMR

Video: MP4, 3GP, WEBM

Gallery pictures: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP

Reader/Other: PDF, ePUB, DRP, ePIB, FOLIO, OFIP, CBZ, TXT, RTF, XLS, DOC, PPT, PPS, PPSX, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, LOG, CSV, EML, ZIP

Kindle (AZW), KF8, TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible Enhanced format (AAX), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, Dolby Digital (AC-3), Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3), non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, PCM/WAVE, OGG, WAV, MP4, AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1, HE-AACv2, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, HTML5, CSS3, MP4, 3GP, VP8(.webm)

Price

$199 minimum

$199 minimum

The larger version, which is Nook HD 9", has several differences from its smaller version.

  • Displays 1080p Full HD
  • 1920x1280 display resolution (256ppi)
  • 1.5GHz Dual core processor
  • Up to 32GB internal memory

Nook HD 9" costs at least $269.00.

Kindle Fire HD

Released by Amazon, Kindle Fire 7" runs on a highly skinned version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with a resolution of 800x1280 pixels at 216-ppi.

Kindle Fire offers Bluetooth for the first time in the 7" device and has starting price tag of $199 which observers said would give the other similarly-sized tablets sold at higher prices a run for their money.

NVO News considers the Kindle Fire HD the best pick because of its high clarity display, better connectivity options and front camera for video chatting.

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