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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wrkingclass_hero - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
^adfly linkstexasti89 - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
If they had included a SD slot (likely a dollar or so worth of parts), this tablet would have been the perfect tablet for me.CityBlue - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
"What’s a little awkward is how tall the bevel at top and bottom looks on the Nexus 7"I think you mean bezel, not bevel...
Brian Klug - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Oops, fixed, thank you!-Brian
techtoll - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
Price is what is the most tempting. Surely going for this whenever available in India.flashbacck - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
people on the androidcentral forums are saying the headphone jack does function as a line-inImpulses - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
This mini war of small HDMI connectors is getting out of hand... Maybe I'm just the only oddball with this particular issue, but right now I have three different devices with three different HDMI output implementations, and the Nexus 7 will be a fourth...My pocket camera uses micro HDMI whereas my M43 mirrorless camera uses mini HDMI. Ok, I can understand that, I can even understated why we'd want a combined USB/HDMI port on phones and even tablets... Didn't MHL already solve that tho? AFAIK HTC & Samsung are still using MHL, now Google's pushing Slimport!
I can charge a phone, a small tablet, an MP3 player, a Bluetooth headset, a small portable speaker, a USB battery pack/back, and even a pocket camera with one micro USB charger/cable... Yet I need four different dongles for HDMI output. One step forward and two steps back I tell ya.
Impulses - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
Looked up Brian's old pipeline port on the Slimport adapter and answered my own question, I'd forgotten Slimport dispenses with MHL's need of powered adapters... I guess that's worth dealing with yet another port, why aren't other manufacturers transitioning to this? Not like MHL ever materialized on TVs (which promised power AND HDMI over a single cable if it came to pass). $30 is kinda steep tho, is no one else offering Slimport adapters still?JNo - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
wireless charging (Qi) ?!?!This will be such an awesome feature in the UK when they never bring out the charging orb, just like they haven't for the Nexus4 almost a year after release!
Well done google! Selling products based on imaginary features!
/angry sarcastic rant over
weiran - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
It's a bit disingenuous to say the Nexus 7 dominated it's form factor, the iPad mini probably sold 3-5x more than the OG Nexus 7.I say probably as we don't know for sure because Google refuses to release sales data, which also makes me believe sales either were under expectations or Google takes a big enough hit on each sale they don't want it public info.