Nook takes its shot at Apple's iPad tablet

There's a lot of heel-nipping in the tablet market these days.

On Tuesday, Amazon.com released the Kindle Fire, the most serious attempt yet to take on Apple Inc.'s mighty iPad 2. Wednesday, Barnes & Noble Inc. started shipping the Nook Tablet, which in turn takes aim at Amazon.

I've tried both new devices, and my conclusion is that there's no clear winner. They're both compact, capable color-screen media-consumption devices for budget-minded users who don't need all the features of a full-blown tablet.

There's a lot to like about the Fire. I like the way Amazon has integrated its content services -- books, magazines, videos, music. I like how it uses the Cloud to store content, reducing the need for storage. (The Fire only holds 8 gigabytes -- same as the base model iPod touch.) Most of all, I like the price: $199, less than half the cheapest iPad.

I like almost everything about the Kindle Fire -- except, well, the device itself.

The Fire is plain, a chunky black rectangle with a 7-inch screen. In action, it feels sluggish. There can be a noticeable lag when you're turning pages in an e-book.

I also had trouble with the accelerometer, the sensor that changes the view from portrait to landscape when you turn the Fire. I sometimes found myself looking at an upside-down app for several moments until the Fire sorted things out.

The new $249 Nook Tablet, like the Fire, operates only over Wi-Fi and has no camera. But where the Fire is physically plain, the Nook is sleek and more visually appealing. The $50 price differential buys you not only twice the memory and twice the storage of the Fire, but also longer battery life and a slot for an SD expansion card.

Barnes & Noble's one-year head start in developing software really shows: Scrolling is smoother, the screen reorients itself faster and the device feels zippier.

Where B&N falls short is exactly where Amazon shines: in the variety of content available and how well it's integrated into the overall user experience.

Books aren't the problem. The Nook's selection is impressive, and it has some nice flourishes.

For many other uses, though, the Nook Tablet relies on third-party apps in place of the one-stop shopping of Amazon and Apple. For movies and TV shows, there's Netflix and Hulu Plus; for music, Pandora; and so on. Each requires a separate membership with its own login.

Ultimately, the choice between these two devices comes down to Amazon's lower price and ecosystem versus Barnes & Noble's polish and network of brick-and-mortar stores to provide in-person support. In either case, paying half what an iPad costs will require you to decide which half of the iPad experience you're willing to do without.