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
GPU Performance
While Denver is new, the Kepler GPU in the Tegra K1 is mostly a known quantity by now. In the Nexus 9, the GPU is still a single SMX clocked to 852 MHz. In order to verify performance, we turn to our standard test suite. For the most part, our GPU-bound tests are meant to represent gaming performance although tests like 3DMark can have CPU-bound aspects while GFXBench tends towards being a pure GPU test.
The Nexus 9's GPU has effectively identical performance to what we saw in the SHIELD Tablet, which means that the Nexus 9 should be able to support a broad range of games without performance issues. There is a bit of a noticeable performance delta when comparing on-screen performance, but this is simply due to the higher resolution of the Nexus 9's display. The one notable exception is the 3DMark physics test, which seems to scale with core count quite well, and that causes Denver to fall slightly short of the quad A15 configuration.
NAND Performance
While storage performance can often be secondary to a smooth user experience, poor storage performance is extremely painful. This is similar to RAM, where the difference between 2 and 3 GB is generally academic, while the difference between 512MB and 1 GB is enormous. While there have been some issues with Androbench with the move to Android 5.0, it seems that the timer issues have since been resolved, so it's possible to resume using the results from Androbench to get a rough idea of NAND performance.
Here the Nexus 9 doesn't suffer nearly as much from full disk encryption that is forcibly enabled on the device; performance is noticeably higher than what we see in the Nexus 6. This seems to lend some credence to the theory that CPUs with ARM v8 ISA would be better suited to handling the need to encrypt and decrypt storage in real time. I tested the Nexus 9 with a custom kernel without full disk encryption to see how Androbench scores might change, but this didn't have a noticeable impact which seems to back this theory, although I'm still not confident that FDE is a good idea to enforce across all new devices.
The NAND itself, a Samsung eMMC package designated by the name BWBC3R, seems to be quite performant outside of pure sequential access, which seems to suggest that HTC hasn't skimped out in this area at all, and the use of F2FS is responsible for some of the best random I/O scores in any mobile devices we've tested thus far.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
169 Comments
View All Comments
techcrazy - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Best Nexus 9 review i read. Excellent work anandtech team.RobilarOCN - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
How does the Tab S fall short of the Nexus 9? I've owned both. Video playback battery life overwhelmingly supports the Tab S, it has a far superior screen (AMOLED...), It has a micro SD slot, it has the ability to connect to HDMI via MHL adapter. The only way the Nexus 9 can output video as it has no available adapter and no onboard MHL support is via 3rd party such as the Chromecast. The 16GB Nexus 9 and 16GB Tab S 8.4 are in the same price range but of course you can expand the memory on the Tab S via a micro SD card. The 32GB Nexus 9 sits in the same price range as the Tab S 10.1 and again the 10.1 can have cheap memory added to it.The only places the Nexus 9 wins is if you want a 4:3 format (and in that case the first gen IPad Air 64GB is cheaper and a better device) or if you absolutely have to have Lollipop which will eventually get to the Tab S.
UtilityMax - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
In my opinion Tab S will be eventually remembered as a flop. Yes, it has a great wide screen and good battery life for video playback. So it's great for watching videos, which is why I bought one (and would buy it again). Unfortunately, videos is the only thing that Tab S does truly well. The Tab S forums on the web are filled with discussions about "lag" and why Chrome can be so slow. For a flagship tablet, the CPU/GPU performance scores could have been a little better, and the standby as well as web browsing battery life could be A LOT better. The other day I was stuck in a library for hours with this tablet and came to realization that I am not sure if this thing can last for 5 hours of web browsing on a full battery charge, which is horrendous. I have a Samsung laptop with a quad core i7 CPU and 17 inch screen that could work longer on a battery charge.Basically, this tablet gives you a great screen, SD card slot, good build quality, and not much else. I am still glad I got a 10.5 Tab S on a sale for $400. However, I don't think it's really worth the "regular" price of +500 dollars.
Impulses - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
5 hours? Yikes... My Atom netbook from half a decade ago could manage that...UtilityMax - Sunday, February 15, 2015 - link
But amazingly, the Tab S 10.5 can play a 720p video for something like 10 hours on a full charge. Go figure.mkozakewich - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Those NVidia charts obviously show the IPC measured in a 'ratio'. They're not going to tell us what exact IPC they get.So yeah, the highest it goes is less than 2.0, which means their IPC for optimized code isn't quite double the performance of regular ARM stuff. I'd suppose the regular code could get up to 3 IPC, which means the optimized stuff could get up to 6 IPC (out of the maximum 7). It seems to check out.
I'd have expected you not to throw caution to the wind when reading first-party benchmark slides.
flamingspartan3 - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
The Nexus 7 2013 is still competitive in many of these benchmarks. It's remarkable how great the device is even after almost two years.UtilityMax - Sunday, February 8, 2015 - link
The criticism that there aren't enough apps for the big screen is somewhat misplaced. I suspect that web browsing, videos, ebooks, and productivity apps are the prime applications for the large screen tablets. Why bother with the facebook app, when you can just login into facebook from chrome, and with the biggish screen have access to the full facebook web site?Impulses - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Chrome alone probably accounts for like 80% of my tablet use (and I've had an Android tablet since the OG TF) seems that's not necessarily the norm tho...Jumangi - Monday, February 9, 2015 - link
Then why pay for a device with such high end components like the K1 SoC if your just gonna use the browser? Maybe this is what some do because the android marketplace is so limited for large tablet apps but doesn't mean its ok.