Kindle Fire vs Galaxy Tab Plus

On the face of it they are both 7 inch tablets and they both run on the Android operating systems – albeit customized versions of it. But really that’s where the similarities end. The Kindle Fire costs $199 and at the time of writing the Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus is retailing for $400 – twice the price.

The primary reason for this is that Amazon have created the Kindle Fire as an enabler for people to consume their library of digital media and actually sell the Fire at a slight loss whereas Samsung need to make a profit on every Galaxy Tab Plus that they sell because they don’t have the media library to increase the lifetime value of a customer.

The key difference between these two tablets is that the Kindle Fire is built to be a media consumption device and the Galaxy Tab Plus is designed to be a smartphone, tablet, media device and PC replacement all in one and this is very evident from the hardware specifications of both tablets.

The Galaxy Tab Plus is awash with features and gizmos that will make the average geek drool but the Kindle Fire is notable for its lack of hardware – it doesn’t even have a camera or an SD card expansion slot.

If you plan to use your new tablet to view and listen to movies and music then both devices will serve you well but with the Kindle Fire you have direct access to the Kindle Store which has over 100,000 movies and TV shows that can be purchased and downloaded with one click (or touch!) along with a library of literally millions of ebooks. The Galaxy Tab Plus will also let you watch movies, download music and read ebooks but you will need separate apps for each of these and it’s not located in one centralized area.

The Galaxy Tab Plus runs a much less restrictive version of the Android operating system and you will have full access to the Android Marketplace and are free to make whatever customizations you want to your user interface and experience.

Amazon only wants you to use their app store and doesn’t want you to be customizing the experience so have restricted access to the Android Marketplace, which in turn restricts the choice of apps you can use. That said there is a justifiable reason for this: the Kindle Fire doesn’t contain many advanced hardware features like GPS, compass, accelerometer and camera so you can’t use many of the apps anyway.

The key point to consider here is that even though the Galaxy Tab Plus can allow you more creativity and options to do work how productive can you be on a 7 inch tablet? You can view reports, presentations and send emails but then you can do that on the Kindle Fire too.

Are you really going to use a 7 inch tablet to write out a new marketing strategy or edit a video advert to upload to YouTube? If you are going to use a tablet for that then you would be far better served with a larger 10 inch device like the iPad or the 10” Galaxy Tab. At just 7 inches, the best use for a device of this size is for media consumption and that’s where the Kindle Fire wins.