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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lordlad - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
you are definitely entitled to your opinion (being freedom of speech and all) and i will be the first to agree with you if it's android v1 till v3.0. But since 4.0 ICS and above, many of the UI quirks had been ironed out at a rapid pace and android is still the most featured (functional wise) mobile OS out there.Which mobile OS currently allows you to access your home NAS and copy/paste file from/to your mobile device? Such a no-brainer use-case but IOS can't do it. Windows Phone 8 can't do it. I have no idea about BB10 so i can't comment but Android can do this among others. Most of the Mobile platform out there to me are more like appliances OS platform whereby the function of the OS and devices are defined by the makers and app-creators. It's like a vacuum cleaner can only do vacuum cleaning. An appliances.
Android, at least from my perspective, it's a mobile computing platform. The OS performed a certain functions but there's no pre-defined role of what it can do or can't. You can probably put android in a nuclear missile launching silo and it will probably worked (with some re-tooling of course).
All I'm saying is android is more akin to having a full computer in a phone/tablet form factor.....while else the other platforms (IOS, Windows Phone) are more like phone and tablet appliance. I'm sure their user experience, being much more curated, resulted in a 'tighter' experience...but it also resulted in a much more 'restricted' experience..
I must have pulled out a few hairs when i am trying to attach certain files to an email i am typing on my ipad. Such is the result of a constrained, 'appliance' experience..
but alas, to each his own. ;-)
akdj - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
Interesting take. Especially Android tablets in launching silos. Word is most of those were built in the 60s 70s and 80s...the power in any of today's tablets far surpasses what computing power was available when those missiles were deployed. So you're right...they very well COULD work as a missile launch and targeting system....that said, they'd get the app AFTER iOS does;). Already over a half million iPads have been deployed by major airlines across the world. Including updated Jep charts and plates, real time weather and traffic conditions, etc. They decided to go with iOS. Not Android. While I'm brand agnostic (I've got iOS and Android devices) and prefer not to trumpet my opinions on a board read and provided by folks many times smarter than me...your take on Android is a bit 'over the top' at this time. iOS is a simple to use device that many 'power' users won't find able to fulfill their needs...but many moms n dads and grandmas and gramps...kids as well....checking email and Facebook, posting n manipulation of stills and video, watching Netflix or Hulu...messaging and browsing, the things they ONLY used their old desktop or laptop for, it's an absolute answer to their needs. Android is a bit more tricky to learn, a bit different to set up and use, and its lack of optimized tablet apps is a killer.While the case can be made that Android COULD in fact be a better all around computing device, I guess we'll just have to wait for the developers to take notice and advantage of such an excellent subsystem.
We'll see. Until then....you're definitely entitled to your opinion, as you say...according to the constitution (though not all readers of Anand are from the USA)...however, you're wrong. Sorry
J
kascollet - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link
I connect my iDevices to my NAS on a daily basis. Works perfectly over SMB and AFP. The app is FileBrowser but there are others to perform this use case. With my former Nexus 4, I couldn't do it as flawlessly, whatever the app I tried.Smartphoneuser - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
This is flame bait. You are in the minority. I always ignore trolls, but could not resist the temptationfor2015nexus7 - Sunday, July 28, 2013 - link
this got to be the best tablet review site. anyways, how is the.speaker comparing to kindle fire hd in terms of loudness and clarity. thax a lot!andypost - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Asus Memo Pad 7" @ $90 might be a better value buy for a lot of folks.harishlj - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Brian's mini review is more detailed than most full-reviews done by others. Love the detailed run-down of the hardware and the features.geniekid - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I believe the popular opinion regarding the use of Snapdragon vs Tegra 4 was that the LTE capable version of the Tegra (the Tegra 4i) wasn't ready fast enough to meet the release schedule of the new Nexus 7.Bob Todd - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I'd say Tegra 4 not fully supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 is a bit of a problem when that's one of the marquee features of Android 4.3 which is debuting on this device...aliasfox - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
To be fair, my 2010 iPad (with its single core processor and a whopping 256 MB of RAM) is already dog slow on iOS5, which I feel was built with the A5 chip in mind (iPhone 4s, iPad 2/3). iOS7 will likely be built with the A6 chip in mind, so with 1/2 the cores, 2/3 the clock speed, and 1/4 the RAM, an original iPad would be left breathless right at startup.As for the Nexus 2013, I like it a lot. My gf has the original Nexus, and while it's a fine product, it doesn't feel particularly premium. The new one looks to be nearly as thin and nearly as light as an iPad mini, but $100 cheaper. Even if Apple were to thoroughly update the mini (A6, retina display), this would still be very, very tempting to grab for a weekend getaway tablet.