Introduction:
For a long while, a good £200 tablet was a bit like a unicorn. It was a nice thought, but you never actually really saw one. Sure, you saw what you thought was one; but it just turned out to be two dudes in a horse costume with some glitter and a small cone glued to the head. So it was with this particular segment of the tablet market. Suitors came and went, all with that dashing price tag, all turning out to be what they really were, cheap pretenders. Then Amazon did something that surprised nobody, brought out a £200 tablet that was actually, *gasp*, usable, the Kindle Fire. Usable in a rather loose sense; it was powered by the rather anaemic Tegra 2 chip; running a heavily customised version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And by ?heavily customised?, I mean so heavily customised it didn?t actually conform to Google?s own rather cavalier Android compatibility guidelines in order to have it granted access to the Play Store. Yet now we come to today, to the Nexus 7. Hope you have your camera?s at the ready, because you?ve just seen the unicorn.
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Hardware & Physicals:
The N7 (Mass Effect reference noted) was touted by Google as ?super thin and super light?. They are 50% right. It isn?t super thin, but it is super light. Weighing in at 340g (for reference, that?s the average weight of a paperback book AND nearly 20% lighter than the Kindle Fire), the N7 is absolutely no trouble at all to hold in the hand. It measures in at 10.45mm, just a fraction thinner than the Fire, but in itself it is not at all slender. For a reference to the 10″ tablet leaders, the Asus Transformer Prime is 8.3mm thin and the current generation iPad is slightly fatter at 9.4mm.
The back of the N7 is a light polycarbonate with a faux-leather feel to it. This takes away what would have been a cheap, plastic feel and replaces it with something that feels a little more premium. While it isn?t real leather, it does strike a nice balance between grip and smoothness. The dimples within the back give it a pleasantly quirky feel, reminiscent of the leather covering of an old sports car?s steering wheel. There is a curve to the back, which facilitates comfortable holding, something Google and Asus clearly took time to think about during the design of this device. The back really has nothing else to it except for two logo?s, the main one being the ?Nexus? logo taking center stage; with the ?Asus? logo (the name of the manufacturer of this tablet) taking a minor role towards the bottom. There is no rearward camera on this tablet, so you have no lenses sticking out. Some decried this, but let?s be honest, when was the last time you actually took a photo on your tablet? Secondly, this was necessary to keep the cost under £200. Heading towards the bottom of the back you will find the speaker slit taking a centred position running roughly two thirds horizontally across the device.
The right edge contains the power button and a 4-pin pogo connector, left edge the volume rocker. The bottom edge contains the devices only two ports, a 3.5mm audio jack and a standard Micro-USB port (which is non-MHL, meaning no 1080 output to external monitors and TV?s). There is no slot for a Micro-SD card, you?re stuck with the storage that?s on board here.
The front of the N7 is a singular sheet of Corning?s renowned (for good reason) Gorilla Glass. As with all other screens under GG?s protection, the glass is smooth, solid, and beautiful. The display takes center stage with a bezel large enough to accommodate a thumb without obscuring the display. Centered above the display is the 1.2MP front facing camera for video calling. There are no physical buttons on the front of the device.
Inside, you will find powering the device Nvidia?s markedly less anaemic Tegra 3 chip. The Tegra 3 has 5 main processing cores. 4 of these cores are the big processing beasts, each one capable of clocking up to 1.3GHz for some serious number crunching. The 5th core is what Nvidia call a ?companion core?; a highly power efficient core that operates at no quicker than 500MHz. It is designed to kick in when the tablet is in an idle state, or otherwise not requiring a heavy amount of processing, allowing the 4 big cores to power off completely. You may think adding more cores simply adds to the power draw, but Nvidia say otherwise. With the highly power efficient companion core handling idle/low-processing-requirement states; the power guzzling big cores will only turn on when needed, thus keeping power draw frugally efficient. Accompanying the main processing cores is Nvidia?s 12-core graphics processor. This graphics processor tears through anything you throw at it, and has been demonstrated to be able to easily handle 3D gaming of near console quality graphics. Rest assured, coupled with 1GB of LPDDR2 memory, your N7 device will not go short of processing grunt, nor will you live in fear of it ever slowing down. As per the title of this review, the 16GB N7 unit comes with, you guessed it, 16GB of storage capacity. Though, due to formatting and a few other things, you actually get a bit less than 16GB (as is with all devices like this). There is an 8GB version of the N7 available for £159, however due to the fact that you don?t get a Micro-SD card slot, the 16GB version is worth the £40 premium. You also get Wifi b/g/n connectivity, as well as Bluetooth, & NFC. For sensors, you get a GPS, accelerometer, digital compass, and a gyroscope.
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The Screen and the Sound:
The biggest loser in a budget minded tablet is usually the screen. They are almost always low quality, low resolution nightmares that just makes the whole experience an incredibly dull affair. Google and Asus, however, clearly didn?t get this memo. Sporting a 1280 x 800 resolution IPS panel (basically a more compact version of the one you find in the Asus Transformer Pad), this 400 NITS beauty gives us a pixel density of about 216 PPI. While it?s not ?Retina? level density like the current generation iPad (though I have my own bone to pick with the ?Retina? definition anyway), it does render text very nicely. It also deals with HD video very nicely. As mentioned before, rating in at 400 NITS, you never have to worry about brightness and the IPS quality of the display means that viewing angles on the screen are brilliant. All in all, the display is part of what makes the N7 a true winner, punching above it?s price-tag weight and even giving higher end contenders a run for their money.
The audio quality of the speakers, however, is much more in line with what you are paying for. While not terrible in any sense of the word, it?s quite clear Asus has stuck in the best speaker they could find while keeping costs where they need to be. You?ll be using your earphones a lot with this thing.
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Battery Life and Processor Performance:
The battery life has been touted by Google as up to 8 hours on full blast, and up to 300 hours standby. While I?ve not actively tested the battery on the unit I?ve been in contact with, I can honestly say that you can go a week or more without needing to hook it up to a power source. That companion core truly does live up to it?s energy sipping mantle. I imagine that gaming/media consumption will begin to drain the battery quicker, as it does with all tablets. Engadget?s standard battery run down test (a full torture test) caused the N7 to give up after 9 hours and 49 minutes. For reference, using the same test, the current generation iPad lasted 9 hours and 37 minutes while having just over a 2.5x larger capacity battery than the N7. The fact that it bests many higher end tablets that it really shouldn?t be competing with in the first place is a great win for the budget minded N7.
On-screen performance can be both attributed to the latest version of Android and the blazing power of the Tegra 3 chip. Swipes and transitions are 60FPS smooth with no slow down no matter what you do. Tegra 3′s weakness does tend to be 2D rendering, with other graphics processors performing a lot better in those segments, but that doesn?t appear to be a problem here. Any weaknesses are probably made up for in the brute force strength of Tegra 3. The boot up time is a little strange, being roughly 35 seconds. With Tegra 3, you?d expect that to be a bit faster, but it?s no matter as the N7 is an ?always-on? device, as with all other tablets, and so will not be restarted much.
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Software:
The software the N7 is running is Android 4.1 Jellybean. [a href="http://andyhall.org/blog/?p=50"]I have already gone over the main points of Jellybean here[/a], so take a look at that for more information. Being a Nexus device, the N7 runs a completely unadulterated version of Android, straight from Google. The biggest advantage of this is that your device will get updates to Android (normally notoriously slow due to manufacturer and telecom carrier customisations) as soon as they come out. This is the beauty of the pure Google experience. As I?ve noted above, and in my Jellybean review, everything is smooth and beautiful. Android 4.1 is a truly beautiful operating system, and is a joy to use. Google have put some time into the 7″ form factor, optimising many of their apps for the 7″ screen. Gmail and Calendar are the biggest beneficiaries, Maps too. As with any other Jellybean device, you get full access to Google Now, Google?s apparent Siri clone Siri beating software that is both voice assistant and all-knowing guardian of information that?s important to you. Chrome is the standard browser that ships with the N7, and runs very well. Rendering is quick, and gestures are responsive. It also does all the cool things like sync all your bookmarks with your main Chrome browser on your laptop/desktop and receive pages sent from your main machine over to your mobile device with the built in Chrome to Phone function.
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Conclusion:
As pointed out at the start of this review, the good budget tablet was something of a myth that others simply could not create. Well, Google and Asus have shown the world what a £200 tablet looks like. With the quality of the external feel of the device, right over to how it runs, Google could have slapped an extra £50 on this device and not required any justification for doing so. It?s nearest competitor in price and form, the Kindle Fire, is beat in all segments but one, content. Amazon is still far ahead of Google in digital content like books (though that is disputed), music, movies and magazines. This is something that will work itself out, however, as Google presses forward with signing content licensing deals with major labels and studios. Apart from that, the N7 is the clear winner by a country mile. While the 10″ form factor tablets may be preferable to some as they are clearly different to phones, you have to remember the price. The current generation iPad retails for £389, the Transformer Prime with the keyboard dock retails for £499 still. The N7 gives you change out of £200, as well as sporting same-in-class quality display, battery life, and processing power; not to mention it?s advantage over all other Android tablets in being a pure Google device, thus receiving updates quickest. Not only that, but there is merit to the 7″ form factor in portability. As a consumption device, the N7 is a lot more conducive to a comfortable time sans stand or dock. All in all, right now, the Nexus 7 tablet is the tablet to have if you?re not wanting to go above £200; and probably even if you can go over £200.
Link to my post: http://andyhall.org/blog/?p=52
