NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 Review
by Brian Klug on November 12, 2013 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Mobile
- Tegra 4
- NVIDIA
- Tegra Note
It's hard to conclude the review for the Tegra Note since my thoughts focus mainly on its competition. For a while now, it's been hard to recommend any tablet in the 7-inch class that wasn't the Nexus 7, and the refresh made it even harder to do so. At present, the Tegra Note 7 enters a market that its predecessor arguably defined, but it's much more crowded now. At the high end we have the iPad Mini which just was refreshed with a retina display, in the middle we have the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 with active stylus, and then finally the refreshed Nexus 7 and now the Tegra Note 7.
It's a market where what product makes the most sense ultimately depends on what you want to do with it. If you want a smaller iPad, buy an iPad mini in one of the two flavors it now comes in. If you want an all around great 7-inch tablet, go for the Nexus 7. If you want to take notes or to save a bit more money versus the Nexus 7, the Tegra Note has a strong value prospect with a lower cost stylus solution that works surprisingly well and solves one of my main complaints with the other note-taking devices – fast pen tracking almost devoid of latency. If you absolutely need an active digitizer with hover capabilities, Galaxy Note 8 will do the job.
NVIDIA's Tegra Note 7 undercuts the refreshed Nexus 7 by $30 and comes in at just $199 from partners who will soon be making them available to shoppers. But that $30 savings comes at a price – that dollar amount means you lose the high DPI display, 5 GHz WiFi connectivity, get slower internal storage, and trade some battery life off. What you do get in its stead is what we've touched on – an even faster hardware platform with faster CPU and GPU, reasonably well executed note taking capabilities, and audio that sounds better, even if it isn't necessarily louder. Like anything, which combination of tradeoffs is "better" really is a story of tradeoffs.
This has to be frustrating for NVIDIA, because with Tegra Note 7 it has arguably built the original Nexus 7's spiritual successor, though I couldn't imagine Google ever being happy without a high resolution display. What it has done however is give all of its partners a tablet that they can sell, bundle, and use to differentiate their current lineups. I suspect building NVIDIA's brand in the mobile space and at the same time making the traditional GPU partners happy with a tablet platform they can somewhat call their own is the real success story for Tegra Note.
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polaco - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
they haven't been able to sell those tegra 4 chips to anyone. Many times those chips don't match the specifications they promise to hardware vendors and thus they have turned their back to NVidia. Now they are desperatly trying to find a market to tegra 4 chips at any cost.BryanC - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
Do you have a source for this? Other than Mr. Demerjian? #sighKrysto - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
I'm hoping for a 10-12" Tegra Note with a Tegra 5 chip and a higher resolution (at least 1920x1200), next year. Too bad Nvidia won't be making any ARMv8 chips next year, though, because I would've also liked that. Making Tegra 5 at 28nm will be pretty disappointing, too, but anyways, just show me a larger tablet with this tech.darwinosx - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
I'd much rather seen an iPad Mini review since people will actually buy and use those unlike this hunk of junk.Raghu - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
Pretty good demo of what its capablehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtZz4PjcAUk
darkich - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
Why aren't you including the Note 3 in your benchmark charts?Please answer
will2 - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
Brian, as you were understandably comparing the Tegra Note7 against N7.2 and commented on the N7.2 being better in having 2band WiFi, then WHY did you omit the N7.2 Wifi Benchark ? (useful to publish speed v range)Also, I realise the N5 is arguably too small to be considered a tablet, but being a high interest current model, would be very handy to update your tables with N5 benchmarks
Arbie - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
I'm sad to see an Anandtech review distorted by personal preferences. Brian seems determined to deprecate or when possible ignore SD card capabilities. The ability to instantly swap huge amounts of media in and out is obviously important to anyone who seeking such a tablet for watching video. The Tegra 7 has this slot; the Nexus 7 sadly does not. But - this fact doesn't even make it into the concluding list of pros and cons!! Brian reluctantly gives the SD slot half of a disinterested sentence somewhere else, after the pages of fit and finish descriptions he is prone to. This is ludicrously unfair to the Tegra and a disservice to those readers who focus on the conclusions. I would pay $50 EXTRA to have the SD slot, on any tablet. The fact that Brian has no use for it doesn't mean it should be excluded from the review! Who's minding the store here?29a - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
You should review the Sero 7 Pro. Better specs than the 1st Gen Nexus 7 for $50 less.Death666Angel - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
Costs exactly the same here in Germany. 170^€ for the 8GB Sero 7 Pro and 165€ for a 16GB Nexus 7 2012. It seems to only have DDR2 RAM (at least the sellers advertise it as such), it lacks some battery power, but it does have miniHDMI and a back camera. Note exactly sure those are better specs.