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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Arbie - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
No micro/SD card = no sale.
One of the main reasons I would buy something like this is "media consumption". Nothing - including large internal memory - can compare to SD for swapping media sets in and out. Like.. 16GB in 5 sec. Plus you can carry any number of extra sets with you.
The continued refusal of Google and Amazon to include SD is sad, at least for me. Fortunately, Samsung does do SD.
sweenish - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
If it really came down to that for me, I'd go USB OTG with my wife's 1 TB WD Passport. Not as elegant as a microSD card, but I'm plunked down to watch something anyway.Otherwise, I'm streaming.
sherlockwing - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
For me the 32GB is plenty for media consumption on a plane, I can get 47 hours of 720p down to 20G with handbrake and that last me a few days. When I run out of videos I just move in new ones from my laptop.bji - Friday, August 23, 2013 - link
You watch alot of TV. 47 hours would last me about ... a year.just4U - Saturday, August 24, 2013 - link
Bji, Some flights can be extremely long and by the sounds of it Sherlock might be one of those types of long haul commuters.. Hah New York To Japan a few times a month might do the trick in having your device stacked full of video.Impulses - Friday, August 23, 2013 - link
USB OTG plus my 32GB SanDisk USB 3.0 flash drive ($37 during a Newegg deal)... It's wayyy quicker to transfer movies to that drive anyway (at close to 200MB/s, which no micro SD can touch).USB OTG works without root even, and I've been seeing small micro-sized flash drives with micro USB connectors if you really need something smaller than a regular flash drive + OTG cable dongle. The former are small enough to always leave plugged in, someone waseven running a kickstarter to sell one such drive.
Diorarat - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Does it work with the N7? Didn't the 2012 N7 lack usb otg support?darwinosx - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
That made me laugh out loud. Get used to it. Even Samsung will be giving up on sd cards. Because they suck.Impulses - Friday, August 23, 2013 - link
I think there's still a case to be made for them, even though USB OTG works great for me I can see situations where it's not too suitable as an alternative, like when giving a tablet to a child.ESC2000 - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
Do you just reflexively say anything sucks that apple products don't have?