Google Nexus 9: Preliminary Findings
by Joshua Ho on November 3, 2014 1:00 PM ESTCPU Performance
While there’s a great deal of ground to cover on the tablet as a whole, one of the most interesting aspects of the Nexus 9 is the SoC. While we’ve tested Tegra K1 before, we were looking at the more traditional Cortex A15 variant. The Denver variant (Tegra13x) is mostly similar to Tegra K1-32 (Tegra12x), but instead the CPU cores are a radically different design. In order to get an idea for how this translates into real world we can look at a few of our standard benchmarks in this area, although Google Octane couldn’t complete a full run. This build of Android clearly has AArch64 active, which means that we should be able to directly compare the Nexus 9 to the iPad Air 2 for performance.
As one can see, at least at this stage in development the Nexus 9 can show some level of promise at times, but can be a bit disappointing in others. In SunSpider, Denver is generally even slower than Krait. However, in a benchmark like Kraken the Nexus 9 easily pulls ahead to take the top spot. In Basemark OS II the Nexus 9 does well overall but this seems to be due to its graphics performance/GPU performance and storage performance rather than CPU-bound tests like the system and web tests. It seems that when the code morphing systems works as expected, Denver can deliver significant amounts of performance. However, when such code morphing falls flat its true performance with a dual core, 2.3 GHz configuration is around that of a four Krait core CPU system at similar clock speeds. Once again, it's important to emphasize that this build is far from complete so performance should improve across the board with launch software. The fact that Tegra13x can approach A8X in CPU performance in some tests is definitely interesting to see.
Battery Life
While Denver's performance is a bit mixed, it's worth taking a look at battery life to see how Denver performs in these areas. As always, our battery life tests are all run with the display calibrated to 200 nits.
While an early build, it seems that the Nexus 9 is reasonably competitive in battery life but I'm not sure that these results are perfectly accurate. At any rate, efficiency at this stage seems to be par for the course, which should bode well for shipping software. This is a mostly display-bound test though, so we'll look at Basemark OS II to get a better idea for compute-bound battery life.
As one can see, while the battery life of the Nexus 9 ends up on the bottom for phablets and tablets, the overall performance during the test is quite high. We're working on a better comparison for the final review, but this should give a good idea of what to expect in general.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
146 Comments
View All Comments
speculatrix - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
Quite often Nexus devices have a close sibling from the same manufacturer but with extra hardware niceties, such as gaining a memory card slot, different or removable battery, USB on the go etc.So it will be interesting to see if HTC come out with a very similar table to this Nex9 but with a memory car slot and some premium features?
arkhamasylum87 - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
Can you guys do a comparison article between apple a8x, tegra k1 and intel core m ? would love to understand your thoughts on the tablet/hybrid market as a whole and if there is a potential here.varad - Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - link
+1agoyal - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
I think the real question is, how will it fair in comparison with A57 which should be coming soon!!darkich - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
The 20nm 1.9GHz A57 is already out in the Galaxy Note 4.Scores around 1250 in single core Geekbench.
But power draw in the octa core setup should be incredibly low considering that the 20nm Exynos 5430(Cortex A15/Galaxy Alpha) doesn't even cross 3W under maximum load!
Also,if the rumors are true that Snapdragon 810 will have it clocked at 2.7GHz, the end result should be quite incredible.
NotLupus - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
I bought a Nexus 7 2013 from Walmart last year just as it was released. Battery life was about 6 hours of screen time with low brightness and no background syncing, doing mostly web browsing or local video playback. It was nowhere near Anandtech's 12 hours, not even the advertised 9 hours. Ever since then I'm skeptical battery life claims for android devices. This Nexus 9 review sample was probably cherry-picked.agoyal - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
I have had similar experience with android devices, I have owned nexus 7 2013,LG G pad 8.3 and Galaxy pro tab 10.1. Had IPad Air and the battery would last a long time mostly with web browsing, much more than the review sites.poohbear - Monday, November 3, 2014 - link
between my 5.7" Note 3 phablet, my 13" ultrabook, and my 27" desktop beast, what exactly do u need a tablet for? All my friends that bought one say it just sits there unused. Seems like a niche market or just a gimmick.WarlockOfOz - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
One solution to your question: replace the phablet with a small, basic phone plus a 8" wide screen tablet and you get something that's more convenient for actual phone calls, provides more screen space for everything else, has a lower total cost and can still be carried in your pockets. Not sure about tablets that need bags myself, but lots of other people seem to like them.darkich - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
I disagree that 8" wide screen tablet is more convenient than a 5.7" palmtop (I happen to own both, palmtop being the Galaxy Note 3).The Note 3 is simply much easier to hold. And the screen is still perfectly big for reading and even movies while laying in bed.
Handling Web pages and gaming is also much easier.
While my tablet is perfectly okay for what it is, I find it using it mostly when my Note 3 is charging.
So I tend to agree with the above post. Phablets (or palmtops as I prefer to call them) are the reason for tablet market stagnation, and are rightfully booming right now.
Just look at Apple's reaction if you need further evidence - neutering the iPad mini a release of the iPhone 6 plus.