The Gold Standard in Android Tablets
With its 7-inch full HD screen and impressive processing power, the new Google Nexus 7 sets the standard for Android tablets. Starting at $229, it’s an excellent value for the price.
The Tablet Sweet Spot
At 7 inches, the Nexus 7′s display renders tablet apps well, but apps designed for phones won’t look too stretched out.
App Array
The display has room for 30 apps, plus touchscreen buttons beneath.
Restricted Profiles
New in Android 4.3, restricted profiles give specific users access only to certain apps.
Google Play Magazines
Magazine text looks sharp on the 1,920 x 1,080 screen.
New Google Maps
Here’s how the new Google Maps app looks on the Nexus 7.
Google Now
You can launch Google Now at any time be sliding up from the bottom of the screen.
Horizontal Logo
The logo on the back of the new Nexus 7 steers the user toward landscape mode, emphasizing its excellence as a video-playback device.
Right Side
The right side has the volume and power buttons.
Top
The headphone jack is on the top.
Left Side
The left side has no buttons or ports.
Bottom
The bottom has the microUSB port for charging and data transfer.
Camera
The new Nexus includes a 5-megapixel rear camera.
When Google launched the first Nexus 7 tablet about a year ago, it quickly set the bar for other Android tablets. Before it arrived, the category was a mess. There were plenty of substandard performers and more than a few head-scratchers. Only the Amazon Kindle Fire had made any real noise, and that wasn’t even a “proper” Android tablet.
The Nexus 7 changed that with its leading hardware, clean software and extremely competitive price (the 8GB version cost just $199). Since then, Android tablets — and their prices — have gotten even better, although there are still plenty of flops. Can Google still lead?
See also: 5 Free Android Apps for Tethering
With the second-generation Nexus 7, the answer is a resounding yes. The new Nexus 7 is a better tablet in many ways than its predecessor, and it still carries a great price. Sure, it’s not as cheap as models like the HP Slate 7, but with the Nexus 7, which starts at $229 for 16GB, the value is much greater.
To look at just one aspect, the screen of the new Nexus 7 is an extremely sharp full HD display with 1,920 x 1,200 resolution. The iPad mini, which costs $100 more, has a 1,024 x 768 screen. That’s even before you consider the 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor and 2GB of RAM, good specs for any tablet.
On top of that, the new Nexus 7 is the first device to run Android 4.3, letting owners take advantage of features like restricted profiles, which lets you limit the apps that specific users can access (handy if you have kids) as well as compatibility with low-power Bluetooth Smart Ready devices such as fitness monitors and smart watches.
Designed for Success
The first Nexus 7 was notable for its excellent design and the new model is even better… mostly. Although its specs are improved (and is still rated at 9 hours of battery life), the 2013 Nexus 7 is slightly thinner and lighter than the previous one. It’s actually just a bit taller and less wide, and the corners are less rounded, giving the tablet a somewhat classier feel.
Google also changed the backside from the perforated “driver glove” material of the first Nexus 7 to something a little more like the matte “soft touch” on BlackBerry phones. The shift is actually more of a downgrade since the original material was a little more grippy, but it still feels a tier up from, say, Samsung’s plastic backs.
The ports amount to a microUSB port on the bottom and a headphone jack up top. There’s no microSD slot, but there are perforations for stereo speakers on the sides as well as a microphone hole. Google lent us the Wi-Fi version for review, so there’s no SIM card slot (an LTE version is coming soon).
Like some other Nexus devices, there’s a small round light within the lower bezel that lights up for a second or two when you get a notification or the tablet is charging. The way it lights up is actually way cool — quickly growing from a small white dot to a slightly larger circle, giving the feeling of a pulse. It’s also almost impossible to see if its dim, adding to the chic factor.
Easy on the Eyes
The star of the Nexus 7 is its ultra-high-res screen, which, at 323 pixels per inch, Google claims is the sharpest tablet display on the market. It’s a beauty, rendering details such as text on magazine pages with incredible clarity — I had to take off my glasses (I’m nearsighted) and get about 3-4 inches away to discern individual pixels.
The improved display is means video playback is noticeably better than its predecessor. Not only does its sharpness render details you’d otherwise miss, but contrast and color are improved as well.
In side-by-side viewing with last year’s Nexus 7, I could see just how much of an upgrade the new screen is. Details like the individual metallic shards of Megatron’s damaged face in the climactic battle of Transformers: Dark of the Moon (from Google Play Video) was better rendered on the new model, and the color of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s face looked more natural (if its possible for a supermodel with several layers of makeup to look “natural”).
Watching the trailer for Man of Steel on YouTube, I could see that the new Nexus 7 didn’t wash out the screen nearly as much when Superman, backlit to the extreme, emerges from his Fortress of Solitude. His silhouette became visible about a second before the old screen, with its more limited contrast, caught up.
For kicks, I checked out how the new Nexus 7 compared to another full HD tablet, the Microsoft Surface Pro. The Pro has a 10.6-inch 1,920 x 1,080 screen and superior processing power to the Nexus in an Intel Core i5 chip. Nonetheless, Google’s Nexus was victorious, with more natural-looking movement and better color. It wasn’t as night and day as the comparison to last year’s Nexus, (and the Netflix app for Windows 8 is probably an issue here), but the new Nexus 7 screen is clearly a video champ.
So we know that the Nexus 7 is a great primary screen, but what about a second screen? Tablets from Samsung and Sony seemingly have an edge there, since they have pre-loaded remote-control apps and built-in infrared blasters for controlling your TV and set-top box. However, paired with a Chromecast or a Google TV, the Nexus 7 is a capable entertainment companion. Still, it would have been nice if Google threw in an IR port, too.
Performance and More
The Nexus 7′s quad-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, along with a hefty 2GB of RAM, provides a smooth overall experience. Apps — even graphics-intensive ones — launched extremely fast on the new Nexus. Magazine pages in the Google Play app loaded almost instantly as I scrolled, where they took a second or two on the old model. Everyday scrolling through visual apps (such as Pinterest) didn’t result in any painful “waiting for the thumbnails to load/everscroll to catch up” moments.
I ran a Vellamo, an Android benchmark tool developed by Qualcomm, to see how well the Nexus 7 stacked up to other Android devices. For the HTML5 “browsing” test, the Nexus scored near the top of the list, better than the Samsung Galaxy S III and Galaxy Nexus, although it was a hair’s breadth under the HTC One X (the list includes mostly Qualcomm-powered devices).
For the app’s “Metal” test, which measures overall performance, the Nexus 7 was the top dog, beating the HTC One X by a significant amount. The original Nexus 7 didn’t do so well on either test, scoring a little above the middle of the pack on HTML5, and below on Metal.
The Vellamo tests are shown below, with the new Nexus on the left, and the first-gen model on the right.
One extra bit of hardware the second-gen Nexus 7 bestows is a 5-megapixel rear camera. Considering the number of people I see using iPads as their camera, it’s a welcome addition, although it’s not particularly remarkable. It’s also not particularly bad, so it’s good to see Google didn’t scrimp. Also, as a stock Android device, the Nexus 7 can capture photo spheres — a special kind of panorama — and the larger screen is perfect for immersing yourself in them.
Battery life was excellent. Starting with a full charge in the morning, the Nexus 7 still had a small reserve after a day of heavy use — many downloads, a few hours of video playback, and multiple accounts synced with push notifications enabled.
Nexus 7 vs. Android Tablets
One problem the Nexus 7 doesn’t directly address is how woefully bad tablet app discovery is on Android. Device fragmentation — where the variety of screen sizes and capabilities makes for an inconsistent experience — is even worse for Android tablets than phones, which often results in tablet apps looking like they’re just stretched-out phone apps.
At 7 inches, though, the Nexus 7 is right in that sweet spot for Android tablets — where apps that were designed for phones still look pretty good, plus you still get the benefit of a larger screen. It’s also possible (though not a pleasure) to hold and operate the tablet in one hand, as I did a few times while standing up on the New York City subway.
So the Nexus 7 addresses Android’s tablet problem not by daring developers to create apps in a larger form factor, but by upgrading the experience of what’s already out there. If you’ve already got an Android phone, and you want to take the experience to the next level, this is where you want to go. And, at $229, why wouldn’t you want to?
The Lowdown
What’s Good
Beautiful display
Superb video performance
Chic, lightweight design
What’s Bad
Unremarkable camera
No expandable storage
Product photos: Mashable, Meghan Uno; screen capture: Qualcomm iSkoot