Nexus 7 (2013) - Mini Review
by Brian Klug on July 27, 2013 12:54 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Snapdragon
- Qualcomm
- Android
- Mobile
- APQ8064
- Nexus 7
- Android 4.3
The real highlight of the new Nexus 7 is of course the much higher resolution display. At 1920x1200 the Nexus 7 is now the highest resolution 7-inch tablet. This new IPS panel is made by JDI (Japan Display Inc) and boasts better viewing angles, 30 percent more gamut than the previous one, and of course better dot pitch of 323 PPI. Alongside that the new Nexus 7 also doesn’t have the always-on dynamic brightness and contrast (NVIDIA Prism / smartdimmer) that many including myself found frustrating with the original Nexus 7. On the new version the equivalent functions are enabled only during full screen video playback. This is a huge improvement since with the feature enabled on the previous Nexus 7 I always felt that greens were undersaturated and some dynamic range clipped.
I did a lot of asking around about how Google calibrates its panels, and was told that in the case of the Nexus 7 there are two stages. The first is the calibration done by JDI on the panel at a high level, the second is an additional calibration at time of manufacture, per device. This sort of thing is relatively standard, but I’ve always been curious about what stages cost extra money – certainly it’s a baseline expectation for the panel supplier to supply a close-enough LUT, but getting Delta E even lower I’m told requires additional expenditure.
It turns out that the new Nexus 7 is actually very close to sRGB this time around, with overall gamut being just a bit bigger than the sRGB color space. In the GMB Delta-E and saturations Delta-E measures, arguably the two most relevant for color accuracy, the new Nexus 7 is second only to the iPad 4, and better than the iPad Mini in color accuracy, a significant step forwards from its predecessor.
The new Nexus 7 also goes very bright, up to 583 nits, with excellent contrast of 1273. This is again not achieved using any dynamic contrast cheating since those functions are thoughtfully disabled.
On the display side of things I’m very pleased with how far the Nexus 7 has come, and it’s obvious that display quality was a big focus for the 2013 model.
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phillyry - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Anand also mentioned that it's possible for the different capacities to have different eMMC controllers.However, they didn't last year.
Would be good to know for this year's models.
Broo2 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
There should not be a difference and the 16GB/32GB flash is used only for storage.phillyry - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Did you read the article?Brian addressed the real lagging issues that Nexus 7 gen. 1 users have been having. He stated that it was likely caused by the storage I/O and that it should be fixed via software.
Point is, storage is usually the performance bottleneck of a system.
et20 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review.I really appreciate it much more than your standard review format.
I only read those if I'm 90% sure I want to buy the product because they are too long.
phillyry - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
+1Ya, we should have this short, sweet, and immediate reviews initially for all major products.
TareX - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
I enjoyed having an Nexus 7 (till it became unbearably buggy, slow, and eventually broke with no trauma)... but I must say, walking around with two Androids is extremely cumbersome. Having apps and files scattered between two devices is annoying... This lead me to the conclusion that I need to invest in a phablet. It comes with the added advantage of excellent battery life on your one and only Android. That said, a viable alternative would be an affordable version of ASUS' Padphone product. But their screen dock is ridiculously overpriced, I can only see a +5.5" phablet as my only choice here. I hope the HTC One Max comes with a split-screen functionality so I wouldn't have to go for the Note III.torp - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
How about comparing wifi signal between the nexus 7 old and nexus 7 new? There are spots in my home where the old nexus 7 simply doesn't work, and it's not a big home.Brian Klug - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Good question, I was never a huge fan of the Azurewave WLAN combo inside the original Nexus 7, I believe WCN3660 and its front end might be better. I would need to compare FCC disclosures and do some testing to find out, unfortunately most mobile devices are pretty constrained, and perform around the same (outliers being those with poor enclosure designs).-Brian
torp - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
Oh forgot an important data point: i also have an iPad 1 and that one has no problems with wifi anywhere in my home... so basically I could say the nexus 7 old's wifi was a bit crap :)zepi - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
When you do a battery life test, could you run one test at much higher brightness level than the standard? On my 3rd Gen iPad I've noticed that the device really struggles with max brightness setting that is more or less required when using the device outside in sunshine.Unlike often far too hefty laptops, people actually carry their tablets around want to use them things on their patios, balconies and outdoor cafeterias.
Otoh, it's not just the peak brightness, but overall visibility and readability of the screen that'd need to be normalised for such testing. Contrast ratios of screens can vary greatly under plentiful exposure to external light, as manufacturers employ different coatings and "clearblack" technologies, not to mention oled vs tft etc.