For me, hackability will be the major issue. I'd rather run the Kindle app and the Nook store app on top of Cyanogenmod than on either of the supplied Android versions.

They should both run ICS pretty well, too -- but I place low odds on Amazon or B&N putting themselves to the trouble of porting it any time soon.

Funny how the things that don't matter were given seven whole sections.

But the one thing that will determine whether either of them succeeds or fails, the intangibles, was given only lip service at the end.

As my mom taught me a long time ago:

Sometimes the more measurable drives out the most important. —René Dubos

Yeah, I actually chuckled when I read "this may be the [spec comparison] that will come in the handiest this shopping season."

Consumers don't care about specs in this market. Sure, a few do, but not enough to make or break a product. This market is all about services, convenience, branding and mindshare. In those categories, Amazon, specifically the Kindle, wins hands down. Even with better specs, the B&N Nook will feel like the cheaper "also-ran" to the more mainstream Kindle Fire and iPad. It's a shame for B&N, but that's the facts.

IMO it's going to come down to selection, price, and experience.

Unless either side comes out with a killer feature that the other can't replicate.

What's the selection of titles, movies, and music? What's the pricing look like? What's the buying and consumption experience? Amazon has all 3 down to an art. Does B&N?

through the consumer lens:

can i buy and read books? both.

can i watch movies with it? both.

play sudoku? both.

listen to music and audio books? both.

my kids can play angry birds? both.

cost the same? nope, the kindle fire costs $50 less.

I'd add consumer brand confidence B&N vs Amazon. In this case B&N needs to overcome at least $50 worth of Amazon's influence to even the odds.

Another thing I'd add is brick and mortar retail availability - in this case I believe the Nook is also available at Target as well as B&N's stores, and that might influence some shoppers who want to try before they buy.

I believe that Kindle is also available at most brick & mortar stores that Nook is (not B&N obviously).

The xNook have a decisive, killer advantage to me : they support countless available free ePubs.

That shouldn't be a problem for the Amazon Fire. It has the Amazon Appstore and that contains a bunch of ebook reader apps, including Aldiko and Kobo which both read ePub books. The former even does Adobe DRM.

I think the big difference is going to be software. I expect that Amazon's engineers are going to be able to pull that off better than Barnes and Noble's.

Nothing against the devs at B&N, it's just that B&N is a book store that writes a bit of software while Amazon is a software company that happens to run an online store.

It's a shame they both still have terrible displays. It's hard on the eyes to read a long text on a screen with < 200ppi. Guess I'll have to wait for the next generation.

Probably fine for casual web browsing and children's books with large type, though.

I had an opportunity to try out the Fire and didn't think that the display was terrible at all, for what its worth. Seemed crisp enough to me.

Isn't the iPad 132 ppi?

And it's a terrible reading device, especially if you've used a high-ppi display. I was ok with reading on the iPad until I got the iPhone 4S. Now I can't stand to read on it, the pixels practically leap out of the screen at me.

Maybe future tablets don't have to hit 300ppi, but they need to be a lot better than the iPad's 132ppi.

I'm not so sure. I have an iPhone 4 and the nook color and I find them both equally enjoyable to read on. but I do realize I hold the tablet at 2x the arms length than the phone.

1080p output but a 600p screen without any video output capabilities. Why? Are they just saying they can re sample 1080p files to a lower resolution?

Summary : they are the same hardware wise. The reviewer barely mentions software. And it's clear he never either device in real life. Not even from far away.

Why is this even here?