The Google Nexus 9 Review
by Joshua Ho & Ryan Smith on February 4, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- HTC
- Project Denver
- Android
- Mobile
- NVIDIA
- Nexus 9
- Lollipop
- Android 5.0
Camera
In the case of tablets, cameras have become increasingly important. While it’s still a bit awkware to take photos and video with a tablet, there is still value to having decent cameras on a tablet. For the front-facing camera, it’s pretty clear that there is a lot of value to be had here as the tablet can be a good tool for video conferencing in lieu of a bulky laptop. The rear camera can also have value, but mostly for taking a photo of a whiteboard or simply when opportunity dictates. To fulfill these duties, the Nexus 9 has been outfitted with a rather standard set of cameras. On the rear, we see an 8MP, 1/4 inch format sensor while the front-facing camera has a 1.6MP, 1/5 inch sensor. I’ve included a table of the full camera specs below in the interest of readability.
| Camera Specifications | |||
| Google Nexus 9 | |||
| Front Camera | 1.6MP | ||
| Front Camera - Sensor | OV9760 (1.75µm, 1/5") |
||
| Front Camera - Focal Length | 2.18mm | ||
| Front Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.18 | ||
| Rear Camera - Sensor | IMX219 (1.12 µm, 1/4") |
||
| Rear Camera - Focal Length | 3.097mm (33mm eff) | ||
| Rear Camera - Max Aperture | F/2.4 | ||
This is pretty much par for the course when it comes to tablets. The optics aren’t particularly remarkable in one way or another, as I haven’t noticed any obvious design issues in any of my test photos, and the focal length isn’t excessively long or short. The UI that comes with Google Camera in general is unremarkable as well. This isn’t a slight against it, but the fact that I don’t have anything significant to complain about is a good step forward from the past when the design of the camera UI was a significant friction point in the user experience.
The one issue that I’ve noticed is that the camera’s auto focus and capture speed are significantly worse than what I saw on the iPad Air 2. Unfortunately, it isn’t really possible to have standardized testing here as a tablet can’t be mounted to a tripod for testing. As there isn’t a custom ISP in the Nexus 9, it’s likely that the Tegra ISP isn’t up to scratch here as I noticed that AF speed is similar to what I saw on the SHIELD Tablet despite differing camera modules.
For the most part, there’s not much else to be said about the camera systems on the Nexus 9 as they aren’t quite as heavily focused as one would see in the smartphone space. All that’s left to do is test the cameras themselves.
In this basic test of daytime photo quality, we can see that HTC has done a reasonably good job of processing the image as noise is generally suppressed without an enormous loss of detail. However, there really isn't a lot of detail to speak of in this sensor. There's also a decent amount of dynamic range as there's detail in the shadows but there's no HDR mode to compensate in cases where there is insufficient dynamic range. HTC continues to cap the base ISO to 100, which seems to be a strange move in this situation as the shutter speed is more than high enough to drive the sensor gain even lower.
In this low light scenario, the Nexus 9 effectively falls flat on its face. With an ISO of 3200 and a shutter speed of 1/12s, there's effectively no detail past the first set of steps. Luminance noise is strong and present throughout the image, and color noise also has a tendency to creep in as well. Given the sheer size of the tablet, it's also hard to stably hold the tablet to take a photo despite the relatively fast 1/12s shutter speed. One should really avoid using this to take photos in low light unless there's no other choice.
In video, detail generally tends to be about the same as what one can find in photos, which means that daytime footage should have decent quality but low light rapidly reduces the quality as the sensor gain must increase. In the case of the Nexus 9, we see that video tops out at 1080p30 maximum with no slow motion available, and that the file is in a .3gp format instead of a standard mp4 that most are familiar with. The video itself is encoded with H.264 baseline at 14 Mbps, which is likely to be below the maximum that the encoder can support. There doesn't appear to be any significant level of stabilization in this case, which is a bit disappointing although not entirely surprising. There is also a lot of focus hunting throughout the video, which is quite distracting.
Overall, it seems that the camera on the Nexus 9 is an acceptable one for a tablet, although this would effectively be unacceptable on a high-end smartphone. The camera itself produces decent output in daytime but really suffers in low light due to the small pixel size, relatively narrow aperture, and small sensor. There are also a lot of issues with consistent and reliable auto focus, as it often takes multiple focus runs to get the camera to focus properly on even high contrast objects. Each focus run takes a significant amount of time as well, which hurts the shooting experience when combined with the somewhat long capture latency. I would avoid using this camera unless it is strictly necessary, although it isn't terrible as a camera for cases such as document scanning.
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melgross - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
So, people only buy devices during the first three months?Impulses - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Apparently... Although getting the review in before February would've shut all these people up, cheapest place to get the Nexus 9 all thru the holidays was Amazon ($350 for 16GB) and they gave you until January 31 to return it regardless of when you bought it.Only reason I'm so keenly aware is I bought one as a February birthday gift, opened it last weekend just to check it was fine before the return window closed... Not much backlight bleed at all even tho it was manufacturerd in October (bought in late December), some back flex but it's going in a case anyway.
blzd - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
What does the month of manufacture have to do with the back light bleed? You don't actually believe those "revision" rumors, do you?If you do, consider how practical it is for a hardware revision to come out 1 month after release. Then consider how one set of pictures on a Reddit post proves anything other than that their RMA worked as intended.
ToTTenTranz - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
I wish more smartphone/tablet makers put as much thought into their external speakers as HTC does.Once having a HTC One M7, I simply can't go back to mono speakers at the back of devices.
Dribble - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Glad the review is here at last, next one a little bit quicker please :)UpSpin - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
I have following issues with your review:1. You run webbrowser tests and derive CPU performance from it. That's nonsense! It's a web-browser test, and it won't be a CPU test whatever you do. If you want to test raw CPU performance you have to run native CPU test applications.
2. Your battery life analysis is based on false assumptions and you derive doubtful claims from it.
The error is quite evident on the iPad Air test. In your newly introduced white display test, with airplane on, CPU/GPU idling, etc. the iPad Air 2 has a battery life of 10:18 hours. Now in your web-browsing battery test with WiFi on and the CPU busy, the iPad Air 2 has a battery life of 9:76 hours. That's a difference of 4%. The Nexus 9 has a difference of 30%, the Note 4 15%, the Shield Tablet 25%.
You conclude: The Tegra K1 is inefficient. But I could also conclude that the A8 is inefficient and the Tegra K1 very efficient. The Tegra K1 needs significantly less power while idling, compared to the A8, which consumes always the same, mostly independent on the load. So finally, the A8 lacks any kind of power saving mode.
That's abstruse, but the consequence of your test. Or maybe your test is flawed from the beginning on.
3. " I suspect we’re looking at the direct result of the large battery, combined with an efficient display as the Nexus 9 can last as long as 15 hours in this test compared to the iPad Air 2’s 10 hours."
Sorry, but I don't get this either. The Nexus 9 has a 25.46 WHr battery, the iPad Air 2 a 27.3 WHr battery (+7%). The Nexus 9 has a 8.9" Display, the iPad Air 2 a 9.7". (+19% area). The resolution is the same, thus the DPI on the Nexus 9 higher. The display techonoly is the same, as you said in your analysis. So the difference must be related to something else, like a highly efficient idle SoC in the Nexus 9.
Andrei Frumusanu - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
The battery life tests analysis is based on true facts on the technical workings of the SoC and its idle power states and we are confident in the resulting conclusions.JarredWalton - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Going along with what Andrei said, an SoC isn't "efficient" if it's doing no work -- the A8 may not have idle power as low as the K1-64, but when you're actually doing anything more with the tablet in question is when efficiency matters. It's clear that the Air 2 wins out over the Nexus 9 in some of those tests (GFX in particular). Doing more (or equivalent) work while using less power is efficient.Imagine this as an example of why idle power only matters so far: if you were to start comparing cars on how long they could idle instead of actual gas mileage, would anyone care? "Car XYZ can run for 20 hours off a tank while idle while Car ZYX only lasts 15 hours!" Except, neither car is actually doing what a car is suppose to do, which is take you from point A to point B.
The white screen test is merely a way to look at the idle power draw for a device, and by that we can get an idea of how much additional power is needed when the device is actually in use. Also note that it's possible due to the difference in OS that Android simply better disables certain services in the test scenario and iOS might be wasting power -- the fact that the battery life hardly changes in our Internet WiFi test even suggests that's the case.
To that end, the battery life of the N9 is still quite good. Get rid of the smartphones in the charts and it's actually pretty much class leading. But it's still odd that the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet and iPad Air 2 only show a small drop between idle and Internet, while N9 loses 33% of its battery life.
ABR - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Idle power is pretty important for real world use for tablets, for example where you are reading something and the system is just sitting there. Those "load web page then pause for xx time" test would probably be really good for measuring.JarredWalton - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
That's exactly what our Internet test does, which is why the 33% drop in battery life is so alarming. What exactly is going on that N9 loading a generally not too complex web page every 15 seconds or so kills battery life?