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The Nook Tablet -- a highly modified Google Android OS, dual core CPU, 1 gigabyte of RAM and other noteworthy specs for $249. That's a great price, but do you really need one?The past month has been fascinating for those following the tablet PC market thanks to a couple of major announcements — what with the Amazon Kindle Fire will be out on Nov. 15 for $199 and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet will arrive on Nov. 18 for $249.
Both devices boast impressive specs at close to impulse buy prices and have generated a lot of press. However, the question that pops up with these devices is whether someone carrying a smartphone needs one of the things.
Consider this. A good smartphone provides plenty of highly mobile computing power and will, in fact, do a lot of things a tablet will. Gaming, browsing the Internet, checking email and actually getting some work done is pretty easy with the right phone, so isn’t getting another device that does a lot of the same stuff almost redundant?
Yes, there’s always the argument that the extra real estate on a tablet makes it a snap to get some serious work done, but there’s a flaw in that logic. Virtual keyboards stink for doing any serious, document-length typing, thus limiting the appeal of those devices for a good number of us out there. Sure, one could buy a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to facilitate marathon typing sessions, but we’re not really talking about a tablet at that point. We’re roaming around in the netbook realm as soon as a full-sized keyboard is attached, and a capable netbook can often be found for $300 or less.
Ah, but the tablet does make a lot of sense when one considers they do some things that other portable devices — phones and netbooks — can’t handle quite as well. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble appear to be on the right track in the way they promote their devices as they’re touting the portable media aspect of them.
Both the Kindle and Nook lines started out as digital readers and they excel in that function. While it’s very possible to use a phone as a reader, it’s hard to argue against the notion that the larger screens on tablets are better suited for reading. Part of the appeal there lies in the illusion of holding an actual book, and that illusion is shattered a bit when reading a book on a smartphone with it’s comparatively tiny screen. Furthermore, it’s simply more convenient to have a large screen that displays several paragraphs per page rather than one that shows a paragraph or two and has the user flipping pages almost constantly.
Speaking of reading, tablets simply handle reading them better. While there are some highly specialized readers from the likes of Marvel that show a panel at a time on a phone, a tablet does a great job of taking comic book pages in such a way that one can see everything on a page at once. Importing that old comic book collection to, say, an iPhone is possible, but it also calls for a bunch of zooming and panning around to appreciate the artwork in a comic book and actually read the story lines running through them.
Then, of course, there’s the notion of streaming movies and the like. While you can get, say, a Netflix app that streams video to an iPhone, squinting at a movie on a 3.5? screen simply isn’t as enjoyable as having an iPad or Android tablet that boasts a bigger screen and larger images. While Netflix may fare better on Androids with screens coming in at 4? or more, videos simply look better on larger screens on tablets.
Finally, the larger sizes of tablets can lead to more complex games, easier to read documents and a number of things that work well with larger screens.
By the way, books and comics are typically rendered more effective on tablets than on netbooks thanks to a screen that goes easily into portrait mode and reveal entire pages well. Books and comics are set up for portrait mode and you simply can’t get there with a netbook (unless, of course, the reader wants to turn his or her netbook on its side and find applications that will work with that arrangement.
Perhaps the most significant things about the Kindle Fire and the Nook is that they really don’t cost all that much compared to, say, higher end Android tablets or the Apple iPad. For those who want solid readers that stream video well, run a few applications and render comics well, the Kindle Fire and the Nook are both very appealing in terms of price and performance.
It’ll be telling, indeed, if both Amazon and Barnes & Noble appeal to people who want tablets but balk at shelling out $600 for an Apple iPad 2. In that context, tablets offer unique enough experiences to justify grabbing yet another portable device. One has to wonder what impact the Fire and Nook will have on the Android market after those devices are available and the public is given the chance to put them through their paces.
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