The Nexus 7 (2013) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 22, 2013 6:00 PM ESTWiFi, GPS
I won't spend too much time on either of these points as Brian already did so in his initial review. WiFi duties are handled by Qualcomm's WCN3660 WiFi combo chip. The new Nexus 7 sees an update to include 5GHz 802.11n support, which is a very welcome addition. There's no 802.11ac, understandably for cost reasons. 802.11ac is probably the only thing missing from this otherwise awesome platform.
When it comes to GPS, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Qualcomm's GNSS implementation remains the fastest we've tested as far as time to lock is concerned. The bad news is there seems to be an issue with the Nexus 7's impementation, likely in software, that results in the tablet randomly losing GPS lock. Update: It looks like this has been fixed!
Note that neither my Nexus 7 nor Brian's have exhibited the instability or consistent reboots that I've seen reports of. I had a single unexpected reboot during my GPS testing but that was it. Brian's sample has been running with over 22 days of constant uptime at this point. I also haven't seen any multitouch issues on my Nexus 7, although touch controllers are sometimes sourced from multiple vendors which could explain some of the issues others are seeing. Update: Looks like this one is fixed too!
Camera
The new Nexus 7 adds a 5MP rear facing camera, something its predecessor didn't have at all. While I rarely use my tablet for taking photos, I will admit the absence of a rear facing camera on the old Nexus 7 caught me off guard. Image quality out of the rear camera is decent. I threw together a gallery comparing the Nexus 7's rear camera to the iPad mini, MeMO Pad HD7 and Galaxy Tab 3 8.0:
In well lit situations and if you're sharing photos at lower resolutions, the Nexus 7's camera isn't bad at all. It's not the best thing in the world but in a pinch it's fine. I also threw in iPhone 5 samples as a reference in the gallery above.
Video on the Nexus 7 (2013) is 1080p30 at 12 Mbps, H.264 Baseline with 1 reference frame, and 96 kbps 48 KHz single channel AAC audio.
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darwinosx - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Was that an ad? because nobody is going to buy your Pipo chinese knockoff tablet.ESC2000 - Sunday, August 25, 2013 - link
Um yeah that was clearly an ad which is annoying. On the other hand your elitism is also annoying. I'd gladly buy a Chinese knock off tablet if it was the best value and had the features I wanted. It's pretty pathetic to be as wed to one brand as you are.jl0329 - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
You duck fucking brat.cbeauche - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
The Nexus 7 2012 had a front facing camera. It's missing from the table.flashbacck - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Man, this is why Anandtech reviews are so great. Nearly tech blogs post horribly vague reviews in an effort to shit out something in the first 24 hours. I appreciate you guys taking your time.q5djC5b0aToy - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Page 4, first table's title is wrong. 2012 -> 2013Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
I actually showed last year's model in that table since it was a bit worse in performance, we confirmed fstrim is working on both models though.KZ0 - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Also, on page one, in the pixel density comparison, Nexus 7 has a resolution of 1900*120. Thin!Thanks for another good review.
q5djC5b0aToy - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Ah, I guess I'm wrong, sorry about that.marc1000 - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Hi Anand. Do you know what version of Google Maps came pre-installed with the Nexus 7? There are some issues with Maps 7.x update on google forums, maybe this version would cause the GPS to loose the fix too?