Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire: Small-Screen Tablet Showdown

• By Eugene Kim

• June 28, 2012 02:03pm ES

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At Google I/O 2012, the search giant announced its newest mobile operating system, Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," and with it a new 7-inch tablet aimed not at the current top dog, the new Apple iPad, but rather at the budget-friendly Amazon Kindle Fire.

The Google branded tablet from Asus, dubbed the Nexus 7, is priced at $199 and will be available directly through Google Play. So how do these two tablets stack up? Read on for our side-by-side comparison.

Let's just get this out of the way right now: From a pure spec standpoint, the Nexus 7 is the superior tablet in nearly every way. The 1,280-by-800-pixel display on the Nexus 7, while not up to the Retina's 264 pixels per inch, will deliver a crisper 216 pixels per inch to the Kindle Fire's 169.

Pushing all of those pixels on the Nexus 7 will be Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3 processor, clocking in at 1.2GHz. The dual-core, 1-GHz TI OMAP4 processor in the Kindle Fire is still going to get you through most basic tasks, like Web browsing, media playback, and most apps. But for the next generation of power-hungry games and apps, the aging chipset on the Kindle Fire won't be able to keep up with the Nexus 7.

Both tablets will connect to 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi networks, but the Nexus 7 has the added benefit of built-in Bluetooth and NFC. That means it'll work with the vast selection of Bluetooth speakers and peripherals, while NFC could be used with Google Wallet or to easily share information between devices.

There are two storage options for the Nexus 7, $199 for 8GB or $249 for 16GB, but Google has yet to announce a cloud-storage option to rival Amazon's free unlimited cloud storage for Amazon content and 5GB for non-Amazon content.

The Nexus 7 will also feature a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, which should be useful for video chats, as well as Google's new map feature, "compass mode," which provides 360-degree images of your surroundings using the camera and gyroscope. The Kindle Fire does not have any camera.

A big difference will be in the software experience, where Amazon has made significant strides to make the aging Android 2.3.4 "Gingerbread" as dead simple and easy to use as possible. Google announced a number of new features coming to Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," including offline dictation and maps, auto arranging of icons, and a predictive keyboard. These aren't groundbreaking additions, and the overall experience should be pretty close to 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich." It should feature a stock build, which will appeal to Android purists.

The Kindle Fire, however, will still probably be easier to use and more intuitive for the average consumer. Keep in mind, the Kindle Fire is unlikely to see any major Android updates or overhauls, while the Nexus 7, being a flagship device, should see more timely updates for future versions of Android.

There's one factor we haven't mentioned, and that's the rumored next-generation Kindle Fire. Recent reports indicate a launch that will line up with the mid-July shipping date for the Nexus 7, and some of the rumored specs put it in line with Google's new tablet. If accurate, Amazon could potentially market the new Kindle Fire directly against the Nexus 7, while dropping the price of the original to $149.

For now, it looks like the Nexus 7 will be an impressive, small-screen tablet that should contend with the budget-friendly Kindle Fire and undercut nearly every other Android option out there, while maintaining top of the line components and the latest Android build. So which will you choose? Let us know in the comments below.

For more, see PCMag's Hands On With Google's Nexus 7 Tablet and the slideshow below. Also check out Google Nexus Q vs. Apple TV.