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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tuxRoller - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
One more thing: the lag that happened when there was high io suggests that android isn't properly using the softirq for io that the preempt kernel provides.As for the cheap nand, I don't see why the oems couldn't use raw nand and then use a file system like nilfs or one of the others to let the kernel properly handle the io.
ssddaydream - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Interestingly, the Trinity kernel seems to improve IO throughput when used in conjunction with a certain script (TKT app runs the script when opened, I believe.)tipoo - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Yeah, I never got why it could be mostly smooth but going to a that blank search screen always lagged. Also similar to this if an app is writing to NAND it can take a while to get back to the home screen.TekDemon - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
To be fair the Kindle still has one other advantage as an e-Reader, you get to borrow a free book per month if you're a Prime member, in addition to the free video streaming support. So here it's really Amazon's ecosystem that's the Kindle's big feature-if you've bought into their ecosystem it'll give you quite a bit more content and they have a $39 per year student Prime (that you get after the expired Student trial) that does let you access videos/books.Of course if you're into the Amazon ecosystem I'd suspect that you're waiting on the Fire 2.
SantaAna12 - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
I think Gabe Newells comments regarding Apples controlling access is applicable to this device and Google. Google wants us on their cloud to sell us content.....its one of their business models. Amazon does the same.....but you can be smart and buy the CD. I think the more we talk about these issues the better......as knowledge is power. For me....this device doesn't work because of the lack of memory....and the known lack of sound quality.milli - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I feel you're ignoring the Playbook comparison a bit too much in this review. I've just bought a new Playbook 32GB for $175. Same 7" screen size (lower res though), OMAP4, bigger battery, better cam (front & back), ....Playbook OS is very usable since version 2.0. I use mine strictly professionally and at that, it's probably better than iOS en Android. Version 2.1 is around the corner and 3.0 around new years.
Maybe not the best option if you're an app addict but the amazing multitasking combined with what most call the best mobile browsing experience, made this a no brainer for me. The 'Print to Go' feature is very handy.
kenyee - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I have a Playbook too (earned it for porting an Android app).Playbook as muchhhhh better speakers.
Nexus 7 is what I grab for if I'm reading, etc. It's lighter than the Kindle and Nook so it's a lot more comfortable to hold for extended periods of time.
And no comparison to any 10" tablet...not sure what he reviewer is thinking...the 7" ones have a perfect use case for reading and playing games. The 10" ones might be better for web surfing for a little while until you get tired of holding it...
joshv - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
One of my frustrations with the Fire (one of many) is the WiFi reconnect when you wake the device. It would frequently take 20-30 seconds, and that's a ton of time for a casual use device. On the other hand the iPad just seems to be always on the Internet. Pick it up, launch the browser, the Internet is on. I know that can't actually be the case, as it would decimate battery life, but the iPad somehow manages the WiFi connection almost perfectly.So, I am wondering how the Nexus 7 performs in this regard.
Impulses - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
If it's anything like ASUS' other tablets (minus the Prime & it's signal strength issues) then it should be pretty seamless. I've rarely ever been held back while waiting for my original Transformer to connect, and I actually have it set to go into airplane mode when the screen is off, for maximum battery life... So it's doing a cold reconnect every time and it's usually good to go before I tap the browser icon.I'm pretty sure it reconnects faster than my Krait phone, tho the handover from 3G to Wifi is probably never given priority.
FWIW, the TF loses about half a percentage of battery life like that when sleeping. You can set it to always remain connected if you wanna receive live notifications or whatever but it'll obviously chew threw battery life much faster (probably twice as fast while idle, so you'd need to charge it every night or every other night at best).
kenyee - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
It defaults to keeping wifi on even if the screen is off...and no problem w/ the batteries