Review: Nexus 7 tablet

The Nexus 7 sets the new gold standard for budget tablets.

After several years of watching manufacturers achieve mixed results with Android tablets, Google has finally had enough. Much like Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface tablets, the Nexus 7 is an attempt to marry the company’s popular OS with the quality of hardware it deserves – and at the right price.

It isn’t technically a Google tablet. You won’t find the company’s name on the device at all. Instead, Google has co-opted an Asus tablet first seen at CES in January, reworked some aspects and come up with something it was happy with – although only Asus has its name on the device.

Whoever takes the credit, the Nexus 7 has attracted plenty of attention with its mouth-watering sub-$300 price tag. For that money, you get a narrow device with a 7in widescreen display, a first look at Android’s 4.1 Jelly Bean update, and even a $25 Google Play voucher.

Little wonder
It’s immediately obvious that the Nexus 7 is a cut above most budget tablets. It’s just the right size and weight (340g) to fit in the hand, and its mottled rear panel feels soft on the palm. A speaker grille sits just below the Asus logo, with power and volume controls on the right edge, and headphone and micro-USB sockets on the bottom edge. It’s sparse, but its gentle curves mean that it feels far from cheap.

The screen is a 1280 x 800 IPS panel, making for a pixel density of 216ppi – not up there with the iPad, but higher than any smaller tablet we’ve seen. It’s pretty sharp and readable, and the wide aspect makes movie-watching a treat. We measured the maximum brightness at 330cd/m2 and the contrast at 1100:1. Our only complaint is that colours lack punch, with a washed-out look that’s noticeable next to more expensive tablets. The speaker on the rear delivers alright sound but you’ll want to keep your headphones to hand.

Inside, Asus has installed a quad-core 1.3GHz Tegra 3 chip and 1GB of RAM, so this is a blisteringly fast device. It scored 3687 in the Quadrant benchmark and took 1799ms to complete the SunSpider JavaScript test – both scores are as fast as tablets at twice the price. It effortlessly ran every app we threw at it, including the intensive Shadowgun and the oddly demanding Angry Birds Space, and everything about the OS feels smooth and responsive in a way that Android just hasn’t managed until now – Jelly Bean’s Project Butter advancements have clearly smoothed out many aspects. It did get slightly hot after prolonged gaming, but never dangerously so; we measured the back at 42°C.

With all that power crammed into such a small device, battery life is hugely important. Asus has squeezed in a non-removable 4325mAh battery, and the Nexus 7 ran dry after 8hrs 48mins of running a video on loop at half brightness with Wi-Fi disabled. This result isn’t anywhere near the best in its field, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a travelling device.

There are only three areas in which the budget obviously shows. First, there’s no camera on the rear, leaving you with an average 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera. Second, although it’s advanced enough to include NFC, there’s no 3G option.

Finally, there’s the issue of storage: the Nexus 7 is available in 8GB ($249) and 16GB ($299) flavours, with no card slots to add to that. Even with its modest price, we’d be reluctant to buy the cheaper model – with the focus on content consumption, you’d fill that 8GB in no time at all.

Source : pcauthority