NOOK Tablet 10.1" vs Kindle Fire HD 10 - Side by Side Everyday Usage Test

It's time to see how the Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet 10.1” and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10 compare back to back in everyday use.

Browsing in Chrome

Let’s start this off with something many people use their tablets for: browsing the internet. I’m going to use Chrome here on both, even though it doesn’t come included with the Fire HD 10, to make it as fair as possible. Both tablets are also connected to the same WiFi network during this entire test.

First we’ll go with a pretty heavy page, ESPN.com. Immediately you can notice the Fire HD 10 take the lead. It loaded everything quite fast, while I had to wait for the Nook Tablet to catch up. This is most noticeable when scrolling. The Fire tablet renders everything as I scroll, whereas the Nook seems like it’s still loading the content.

Clicking another article shows the same. The Fire loads the next page immediately, including the embedded video. The Nook seems to be waiting for something. To rule out any network issues, I ran speed tests on all the devices I have next to me. Both tablets hit 37Mbps from Netflix’s fast.com test, and my trusty LG G2 there, which I use as my camera viewfinder, is showing 32Mbps. The HP mt44 I unboxed recently is hitting 100Mbps in the same room. So it seems like an even playing field for the tablets as far as network is concerned.

Next I’ll switch to a lighter website, Wikipedia. Even on these text heavy pages, you can see the Nook struggle to render the page as I’m scrolling. You can even see the difference in fluidity between the two tablets. The Fire scrolls quickly and fluidly with no stutters, while the Nook can’t seem to keep up, and gets a bit jagged.

Ok, another pretty heavy site, BBC News. This site, at least at first, seems to be doing fine on both. The Nook seems like it’s handling it ok, and the Fire is doing great. As long as you keep the scrolling to a slow pace, the Nook can cope. Let’s find an article and see how they do. The Nook, again, just feels like it’s waiting for stuff. The images aren’t rendering, the social sharing links aren’t showing up. Even the ads take longer. However, once everything loads, it performs just fine. If not quite as smooth as the Fire HD 10.

Let’s pinch to zoom and see what happens. Ok, not bad. But then the Nook’s lag creeps in, and I accidentally hit a link because of it.

This is quite an appropriate example that sums up this entire browsing test. The sluggishness of the Nook makes the screen feel unresponsive and twitchy, and it makes the entire experience frustrating at times. And then, because it takes longer to do everything, it makes recovering from those mistakes even more frustrating.

Browsing test goes to the Kindle Fire, it’s just overall a much better experience.

Reading in Kindle or NOOK Apps

Now let’s relax and read some books. That’s what these tablets are designed for. Immediately on starting this test, you can see some of that frustration creep back in. The Nook’s slow performance makes it feel very unresponsive, and I often find myself tapping and retapping because nothing happened.

Let’s get into a book and forget about the world of performance. They both perform really well once you’re in the book. The Nook has a bit of a delay in page turns, but that can be blamed on the little page flipping animation. Start flipping through pages and you’ll be hard pressed to notice a difference here. It really just comes down to which ecosystem you have your books in, and which interface you like better.

The Nook Tablet also feels a bit better in the hand. The soft touch back and slight edge to the display make it a bit easier to hold for longer periods. The Fire HD 10 has a more plasticky feeling back and rounded corners on the sides. It’s not difficult to hold, just less nice. Keep in mind, this is pretty subjective.

I’ll give the Nook another advantage here too because out of the box, it can install the Kindle app in addition to its included Nook reading apps. The Appstore on the Kindle Fire HD 10 doesn’t seem to have the Nook Reading app. You have to side load the google play store to get access to any book market besides Amazon. On the Nook you can, right out of the box, install Google Play Books, Kindle, Kobo, and any other reading app you may use. To be clear, you can do this on the Kindle Fire devices as well, but not right out of the box.

Reading goes to the Nook Tablet. Access to all the bookstores you can find in the Google Play Store, premium feel, and a bit longer battery life while reading give it the win.

App Browsing/Installing

Next we’ll do something most people do: browse and install apps. I’ll be using the Google Play Store to keep it fair here. As you can see, the Kindle Fire HD 10 demonstrates that same fluidity from the browsing test. Scrolling around, clicking around, it all just smoother and more enjoyable on the Kindle Fire. The Nook is perfectly usable here, it’s just a bit sluggish.

Let’s go deeper and install something. How about Spotify. First thing I noticed was that they seemed to be downloading different sizes. Weird. Surprisingly here, the Nook actually installed the app faster. I’ll call this one a draw. Installing multiple apps seemed to mirror this. It must be a difference in the Android versions.

Multi-tasking

Let’s multi task a bit. That’s something most people tend to do right? How about we go back and read a page from our book. Not bad at all. Now let’s throw a game into the mix. That chapter bored me, I need some entertainment. We’ll jump into Alto’s Adventure.

These tablets are both freshly restarted before this test, so this should be a fair look at how quick this game starts up on both.

Immediately you’ll notice the load time difference between the two. The Fire HD loads up much quicker here. But let’s jump out here, maybe we want to install something else, or just browse around. Back to the Play Store.

The Fire Tablet seemed to keep that in memory, while the Nook had to reload it.

Now into Spotify. And back out to the launcher. Let’s just browse around a bit, and try to find a book.

Ooops, I’m bored with these books again, let’s get back into our game. Interesting, this time the Nook actually kept the game in memory, and the Fire Tablet had to reload it.

Ok that’s enough gaming, how about we get back into Chrome? We’ll load up that article about breakfast from before.

They both took a second, but the nook seems to be handling this page worse than before.

I’m going to call this one a draw with a slight advantage to the Fire HD 10. The Fire Tablet has better game load times, browser render times, and overall better performance, but the Nook doesn’t seem all too fazed by jumping between apps. Except for Chrome, but that performance was already bad to begin with.

Apps Experience

Finally, we’ll get into a great example difference in app selection. The built in Amazon appstore has a lot of the stuff you’ll want on a day to day basis. But there are some exceptions. For instance, when I tried to run my benchmarking suite on the Kindle Fire HD 10, I couldn’t find the most recent version of GeekBench. I ended up installing the Play Store to get around this, but I don’t feel like I should have to do that on my brand new tablet.

Some worse examples I mentioned in the reading test are the lack of other book markets. Amazon tries to hold you in their ecosystem for as long as possible, with the hopes that you’ll spend more money if only their services are available. This also enables them to give a pretty big discount on the hardware. This Fire HD 10 I feel is worth far more than the suggested retail price of $149.99.

The Nook, on the other hand, gives you full access to the Google Play Store and opens their product up for use by anyone who wants a cheap tablet, whether they use Nook services or not.

This test is going to the Nook Tablet 10.1” simply because I opened the box, turned the tablet on, and immediately I was able to install the Kindle app from their largest competitor.

Summary

Overall, what can I say about these two devices? How do they stack up? They’re both pretty low priced tablets aimed primarily at media consumption. For that purpose, they both get the job done. At their full prices, $129.99 for the Nook Tablet 10.1” and $149.99 for the cheapest Kindle Fire HD 10, they’re both very good value. But I’d say, even at full price, the Fire HD 10 is the better value.

It’s pretty clear from the video that the Kindle Fire HD 10 has the performance advantage, and I believe has the better screen and speakers. Speaking, heh.., of those speakers. They also fire down when the tablet is being held in landscape mode, which is great for videos or games. The stereo speakers on the Nook Tablet 10.1 get blocked by your right hand while playing games.

The Nook is by no means a bad tablet. It suits the target reading market that Barnes and Noble caters to really well. It has a bright, crisp screen, and it feels nice to hold. It’s inclusion of the Google Play store out of the box also gives it a distinct advantage over the Fire HD 10. However that can be fixed quite easily in about 2 minutes. But some people don’t want to deal with that though, and it’s understandable. They just want their tablet to work. Who doesn’t want that?

Barnes and Noble NOOK Tablet 10.1

Pros

• cheaper

• feels better in the hand

• decent screen

• battery life in use

• official accessories

• Android 8.0 Oreo

• Google Play Store included

Cons

• mediocre performance

• poor standby battery life

• speakers covered by hand

• WideVine L3 (SD Netflix/Hulu/etc)

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10

Pros

• great screen

• better speakers

• better speaker placement

• great standby battery life

• better performance

• WideVine L1 (HD Netflix/Hulu/etc)

Cons

• no google play store out of the box

• only Android 5.1.1 Lollipop 

• less customization out of the box

We’ve done benchmarks, we’ve played games, and now we’ve compared them side by side. So how would I sum these tablets up? Well, the Nook Tablet 10.1 feels like a device made for, well.. reading. It’s a 10.1 inch reading tablet, that technically can do other things. It’s not extremely comfortable doing those other things, but it can do them. The Fire HD 10 on the other hand, is a more well rounded device. It’s a media consumption and general use tablet that also just happens to be loaded up with everything Amazon.

Buy

Amazon Kindle Fire HD 10 32GB with Offers

Release Date: 10/2017

Price: $149.99

Buy a Kindle Fire HD 10 directly from Amazon: 

• 32GB with Special Offers: $149.99

Barnes and Noble NOOK Tablet 10.1"

Release Date: 11/4/2018

Price: $129.99

Buy a NOOK Tablet 10.1" directly from Barnes and Noble: 

• Blue: $129.99

That’s all for this side by side comparison of the Nook Tablet 10.1” and Kindle Fire HD 10. Check out this post's video down below for the hands on experience. Stay tuned for my full reviews of these two low priced tablets. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!