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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hughlle - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Agreed, what is the issue. I do not know whether my N10 has dual line in line out for the very reason that I have absolutely no reason to have tested it, the built in microphone is more than sufficient in terms of quality for video calls and such.Hrel - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Seriously with the no 802.11ac? It's 2013, no wireless devices should be shipped without 802.11ac; that's stupid.Arbie - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
-No micro-SD = no sale. As the author notes, tablets are widely used for watching videos. With SD you can swap media sets in and out infinitely faster than any other way. Like... 16GB in 5 sec. Google and Amazon can continue to pretend that it doesn't matter, but that's obviously idiotic. I'll buy something else, that's designed for ME. The price difference is worth it for a such major feature.
fteoath64 - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Yeah. No SD no sale for many out there. Look at HTC, almost going OUT OF BUSINESS for omitting such a simple thing. In fact, none is so bold as to provide TWO microSD slots!!!. People looking to MicroSD slots flocking to GS4 by the millions and millions!, Like over 10 million!.darwinosx - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Good for the few how care. Very few devices have them now and soon none will. Get used to it.netmann - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Can someone please review Nokia Lumia 1020 since 920 review was skipped!darwinosx - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Yeah! There's like 3 people who care!!Travis Jackson - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Very tempting... However, I think I'll wait a few months to see if a "Bay Trail" equivalent turns up - Preferably something with the same resolution (1920x1200), but an 8-inch screen.I would gladly pay extra for Intel inside.
fteoath64 - Tuesday, August 6, 2013 - link
Forget Intel's BS of a chip for any tablets. Their gpus are so slow, you might only be watching videos and not playing cool games you wanted. Sorry, that chip has been left behind unless you are after a Windows RT tablet ?!.! Why would you want that ?.KDOG - Saturday, August 3, 2013 - link
No HDMI?? Why? It seems backwards that the Nexus 10 - with its already easier to view bigger screen has a HDMI out port but the smaller one - that you'd be more likely to want to send out to a bigger screen - doesn't have one. Its not like the hardware wouldn't support it.