The Google Nexus 7 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on July 26, 2012 11:35 AM ESTFinal Words
The Kindle Fire was great because it married decent software with decent hardware, at a reasonable price. Previous attempts at ~7-inch tablets made sacrifices in one or more of those areas. Amazon knew what it was doing and the Kindle Fire apparently sold quite well. The Nexus 7 executes the same formula, but with better components. The OS is miles better than what you get with the Kindle Fire, and as a Nexus device built by ASUS it's likely to be the first in line for major Android OS updates so long as Tegra 3 is up to snuff. The hardware is better as well. OMAP 4 was good for its time, but Tegra 3 is just faster. While the usefulness of those extra cores is debatable, clock speeds are higher and the added cores definitely don't hurt performance.
Finally the price point remains unchanged, at $199 the Nexus 7 is a tablet for those who are on the fence about owning a tablet. If you're able to carry around and use the iPad in lieu of a notebook, its $499 price tag is easily justifiable. If, however, the iPad is just an augment to your computing life then spending $499 becomes a tougher pill to swallow. The Nexus 7 brings that commitment level down considerably. For years Android tablet makers have gone after the iPad with comparable hardware, at a comparable price. While there have been some successes, the market for $499+ Android tablets will likely be cannibalized by Windows RT tablets come late this year. The Nexus 7 takes Android into a space that it's quite comfortable with. Subsidized $199 Android phones sell all of the time, and the Nexus 7 delivers a mini-tablet experience at that same price point.
The screen isn't big enough for everyone, but if you're fine with (or better yet, really want) a 7-inch tablet, the Nexus 7 is great. It's well built, has good hardware and is priced perfectly. The only downside is really the limited (and not expandable) internal storage. The lack of expandable storage keeps the Nexus 7 from winning a higher level accolade, but the rest of the package is enough to earn our bronze Editor's Choice award.
The Nexus 7 isn't just a great Android tablet, it's a great tablet.
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Death666Angel - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
My Chinese tablet and my SGS2 have Wifi set to always on and there is nearly no battery drainage. My SGS2 has standby time of over 5 days with Wifi on and occasional talks. My tablet has standby for over 2 days and I have never gotten it from 100% to <5% battery in a single day so far.Wifi is quite tame these days, I don't see any reason to not have it on all the time.
sjvarley - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
"the limited NAND capacity prevents the Nexus 7 from being home to more than a single full length movie"Really?
If you need 8GB to store a full length movie on a tablet, then you're using the wrong codec.
tipoo - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Yeah, on a 7" screen a 700MB rip should look fine.ssddaydream - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I like to use uncompressed MKV.One of the things I would love if Anantech looked at was ability for the tablet to decode various vidoeos.
For example, I've had some trouble playing h264 1080p .MOV files smoothly (it was pretty bad, actually), but I haven't messed with it much yet. I'm confident that a good codec for 1080p content should scale the Nexus 7 display properly and still provide fluid playback.
Death666Angel - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
Since the SoC is strong enough to play back anything I throw at it from my normal TV media station, why I should I have to re-encode it for storage sake when storage is about the cheapest thing in the BOM of any tablet? Yes, I can do that, but I gain nothing from it except spend time when a few dollars worth of NAND could have gotten better results.And 700mb for 720p lasts you about 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how many audio streams you have and how much quality you want.
Torrijos - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Hi,nice review, as always, but a couple of reviews back you had a plot about device efficiency (a quotient of battery life and battery size).
It would be nice to have a repository article following the evolution of power efficiency with OS updates and the influence of the different CPU architectures.
tukkas - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
how can the nexus 7 handle a shared device (i.e. multiple family members or guests) who don't want their gmail to necessarily be viewable by all? thank youHacp - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Why only bronze? I say if you are looking to buy a tablet without data, the Nexus 7 is at the best price point . Anandtech used to be about price/performance. I'm dissapointed.will2 - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
An excellent review very thorough in important areas not covered by other reviewers, and with good insights comparing N7 with alternatives.However I think your verdict should list more negatives than limited unexpandable storage. To my mind another serious limitation of the hardware is lack of HDMI out.
I seek a small tablet (with enough memory to hold a reasonable selection of films) I can take around the home and plug into any TV to view, or likewise watch the films at a friends home. I want a tablet to be more multifunction, so when at the bedside it can be both both monitor CCTV and be used as an Alarm Clock Radio as it almost certainly has a FM radio in the same Broadcom chip for the WiFi & BT. Adding HDMI Out, be it via discrete HDMI socket, or cheap USB/MHL solution, and making available the embedded FM Radio, adds neglible cost to the product and makes it more widely useful.
TareX - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
Then you don't want a $199 tablet.