As far as the digital books market is concerned, the top three players are Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Canadian-based Kobo – each tries to appeal to the bookworm side of people with a range of e-reader devices, and each with its own ecosystem. It wasn’t long before the three started releasing full-fledged tablets for customers who seek more out of their monochrome e-readers.
The battle between the 2012 Kindle Fire and Kobo Arc starts right here.
Design
You’ll find no cosmetic changes in the new Kindle Fire, as Amazon has only tweaked the internals. Hence, we have a tablet whose looks seemingly stuck in 2011. There’s nothing too overly exciting about the Fire, but we don’t see anything that may distract the overall user experience – except that it’s a bit on the lumpy side.
Customers who are looking to upgrade to the latest Kindle Fire from the original one won’t have any trouble adjusting to its aesthetics and form-factor.
The Kobo Arc has received a major makeover in the looks department.The design of B&N’s Nook Tablet, the Arc bucks the trend by featuring dual front-facing speakers, which might just end up becoming the company’s signature look. We kind of dig the colorful quilted-back plates that you can get for the Arc in case you get tired of the white and black color options.
Unlike the Kindle Fire, which has been kept pretty bare from any buttons, save for the one that powers up the device, the Kobo Arc has both a power and volume control button, with the latter being placed on the right side of the tablet.
For those wondering how the two slates measure in millimeters and grams, here are their dimensions:
New Kindle Fire have a dimension of 190 x 120 x 11.4mm – 400 grams
Kobo Arc have a dimension of 189 x 120 x 12.4mm – 364 grams
Hardware
Design and looks can only go so far if they’re not complemented by a set of specs to take the tablet all the way to the finish line. Fortunately, Kindle Fire part deux hasn’t been spared from receiving a boost in that all-important department.It now boasts a dual-core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430 processor which Amazon claims will run 40% faster from its predecessor. The RAM size has also been doubled to 1GB.
But this is where the list of internal improvement ends. Customers won’t find anything new about the upgraded Kindle Fire when they look at the paltry 1,024 x 600 display (169 ppi). Likewise, the tablet’s still stuck on 8GB of internal memory (with no expandable storage option), single-band WiFi, and 2-point multi-touch.It have features like camera, Bluetooth, and GPS. Considering its price, we don’t think you can complain much.
Moving on to its rival, Kobo has definitely upped its game by equipping the Arc with some serious arsenal. Behind the 7-inch IPS HD display (215 ppi) that the tablet sports, you’ll find a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor, which apparently is a better performer than NVIDIA’s quad-core Tegra 3 SoC. The Arc also packs 1GB of RAM, and a 1.3MP HD front-facing camera.
Similar to the Nexus 7, the Arc comes in two flavors: 8GB ($199) and 16GB ($249). Unfortunately, the similarity extends to the lack of microSD card slot , an omitted feature that’s once the saving grace of the old Kobo Vox.
Software & Ecosystem
The new Kindle Fire runs atop the Android operating system. Since it’s a forked one, Google’s owned Play Store and its core apps are off-limits for owners of the tablet. The interface certainly gets the job done for those who want to quickly dive into their newly purchased e-books and magazines or watch movies.
It now offers 120,000 hit movies and TV shows, over 1.2 million of books, 500 magazines, and 20 million songs. Although the number of apps available on its app store is less than what you’ll find on Google Play, you’ll have no problem getting ahold of the most popular ones. You just have to deal with the fact that you can’t get your source of amusement elsewhere. It’s Amazon way or the highway.
0 comments:
Post a Comment