Conclusion
The Nook has a retail price of $249, the Galaxy Tab, $349. That $100 difference buys a decent amount - a faster processor, a more compact frame, better battery life, and real support. With the Galaxy Tab, you’re very much buying a finished product, whereas with the Nook, you’re buying a device that you can hack to oblivion. There will always be little bugs with CM7 or any other custom ROM you might decide to use for the Nook, but you have the flexibility and the freedom to do whatever you want the system. Overclocked kernels, custom skins and launchers, updating the ROM to the latest nightly build, anything you could possibly dream of. You can do most of that with the Samsung as well, but the Galaxy Tab does provide a more polished and more finished feeling UX out of the box.
And honestly, the Galaxy is the better tablet here. It’s more powerful than the Nook, it’s more polished than the Nook, and it has more features than the Nook. The downsides? It doesn’t have as good a screen and it’s 40% more expensive. The extra money gets you a lot of the features that are expected in a tablet device these days, but here’s the way I see it.
At $249, the Nook Color is $20 more expensive than an 8GB iPod touch. At $349, the Galaxy Tab WiFi is $50 less expensive than a 16GB ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. Put in terms like that, the Nook Color looks like a pretty good deal, and the Galaxy Tab really doesn’t. As tablets running phone-centric versions of Android, the Nook Color and the Galaxy Tab are pretty similar. The hardware and UI details might be a little bit different, but the core usage model is the same. The Tegra 2-Honeycomb combination changes that in a massive way. That $50 difference between the Galaxy Tab and the Transformer basically represents the jump from a netbook to a MacBook Pro or similarly specced PC. It’s much more powerful on a hardware level, it has a larger, higher resolution IPS display, and it’s running Honeycomb. I’m picking on the ASUS specifically because it’s the least expensive Honeycomb tablet on the market, but any Android 3.0/3.1-based tablet represents a significant step up from the 7” tablets, whether it be the Xoom, Transformer, Acer Iconia (review forthcoming), or one of the larger 8.9”/10.1” Galaxy Tabs. It’s a different world when you get to Honeycomb, and the 7" Galaxy Tab just doesn’t have the hardware or software to compete with them.
Neither does the Nook Color (until a working Honeycomb ROM is released), but the point is, it doesn’t really have to. If you’re looking for a cheap tablet around the $250 mark, it doesn’t have much in the way of real competition. The Galaxy Tab is a better tablet than the Nook, but it isn’t nearly as hacker-friendly and once you get to the $350-400 price range, there’s a lot more options to think about.
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MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Sorry for the typo, it is early for me. :oLukemcd - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
It's off in size. That's the primary reason they did not make a direct comparison. It really is an apples-oranges thing, too, since two-handed typing is perfect with a vertical Nook but really isn't once you get much beyond that.jconan - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link
Dido, got the Transformer from Fry's even though amazon sells it for 443. It is quite worth it with splashtop pc access and portability even though it is a bit more for the portability. It does pale to iPad in terms of quality apps but for the freedom from iTunes it's liveable.ViperV990 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Is it feasible for a regular joe to put Honeycomb on either tablets?Also, is either of them capable of acting as a Google Voice/Talk client?
zvadim - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Nook doesn't have a microphone, so unless you try for some kind of Bluetooth headset solution....ForeverStudent - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I realize this is kind of irrelevant to the article, and I apologize, but are the dimensions of the devices on the first page switched? They seem to show that the nook is significantly smaller than the Tab, about 30% shorter and narrower. But then throughout the article you talk about how much more compact the Tab is. I could be confused, I'm just checking.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Ah crap, I think those are the dimensions for the EVO 4G...Fixing that now :) Thanks for catching that.cosmotic - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Just as this was published Woot.com has the Refurbished Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" 16GB Android Tablet - Wi-Fi + 3G for $259.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
That, my friend, is a good buy. Not sure if I like the idea of a refurb, but if you're dead set on a Galaxy Tab, that'd be tough to pass up.phendric - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Ditto to that. This isn't the wi-fi only version of the Galaxy Tab, but the full 3G version (with the Hummingbird SoC, and other better hardware). I'll only add that it runs on Sprint's network.I wonder if activation of a data plan is required? Anyone know?
I signed up to two different websites just now - Woot, to order the Tab, and Anandtech, to leave this comment. I've been a silent reader of the site for several years now, but just as I was wondering why there wasn't a good review comparison between the two tablets on a high-traffic site, this showed up.
Great site, good writing, active community.