The Amazon Kindle Fire ($200) and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet ($250) are the best tablets we’ve tested in their price range, our latest Ratings show. Each has a very good 7-inch display, weighs of around 14 ounces, has connectivity via Wi-Fi only, and features an Android operating system that’s been customized to each company’s distinctive media content.

There are still shortcomings with both tablets when you compare them with the Apple iPad: For example, the displays are smaller and provide less real estate for movie viewing. In addition, Amazon’s and Barnes & Noble’s app stores have significantly smaller selections than the 140,000 apps available from Apple.

Still, the iPad costs $500 and up. And the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet have a lot to offer, especially at their prices. Here are some of the reasons why each of these devices is worth your consideration.

Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet

• Excellent touch response: Smooth movements and great responsiveness to finger taps and swipes make this tablet a standout in its price range.


• Configurable home page: If you’re the type who likes fiddling with your home page and making it yours, you’ll appreciate the Nook Tablet’s configurability. You can group icons as you wish, add your own photo as wallpaper, and more.


• Plenty of storage: A surprising number of tablets lack a memory card, but the Nook Tablet provides 16GB to start (double that of the Kindle Fire) plus a memory-card slot so you can add up to 32GB more.


• Record your own voice: You’ll appreciate this one if you’re often away from home without your family. Record your own voice reading a selection of kids’ books and save it for playback whenever you’re traveling.


• Magazine reading: The iPad remains the best platform for reading magazines, particularly because its larger screen displays an entire page in text large enough to read. But the Nook Tablet’s “article view,” which displays a ribbon of text on top of the magazine page, is a bit truer to the magazine content than the method used by the Kindle Fire. With that tablet, choosing “text view” displays the magazine page in a format that looks more like a book. You can also pinch and zoom on both devices to read magazines.

• Amazon Prime: This $79-a-month yearly subscription includes free streaming of movies and TV shows, as well as the ability to buy or rent content. Streamed movies loaded quickly and played smoothly. You get 30 days free with the purchase of a Kindle Fire.


• Cloud storage: As long as you have Wi-Fi, you don’t necessarily need to store much on the Kindle Fire, at least when you’re in a Wi-Fi zone. Instead, use Amazon’s Cloud service for music, movies, apps, and more. Anything you purchase from Amazon is stored free; for everything else, you get 5GB gratis. There’s a software button on the Kindle Fire that lets you toggle back-and-forth from cloud-based to device-based content.


• The music player: It’s easy to add music, both from your personal collection or by purchasing from Amazon’s integrated music store, to the Kindle Fire, and to access it from the device. Store it on the cloud or directly on the device.


• Borrowing books: Amazon recently launched the Kindle Lending Library. Amazon Prime subscribers can borrow one book per month, free, for an unlimited time. Thousands of books are available on the service. Also, borrowing from public libraries can be done wirelessly at least in part from the Kindle Fire; you must select the book from a computer, but the title is then sent wirelessly to the device. On the Nook, as with most e-book readers, the device has to be connected to a computer to receive the borrowed book. However, Barnes & Noble says it is working now to streamline the library process on its devices.


• Movie downloads: While you can’t download those free prime movies to the Kindle Fire, you can download titles you buy or rent from the Amazon Instant Video store to the device. That gives the Kindle Fire the edge for video-watching when you’re away from a Wi-Fi connection. Barnes & Noble has promised to add movie downloading to the Nook Tablet early in 2012. Meanwhile, you can stream videos from Netflix and Hulu Plus.