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After months of leaks and hints about the Nexus 7, it was clear what to expect from Google’s first tablet. The major question was: “Can it possibly be as good as it looks, and only cost £160?” The verdict is in.
CAVEAT: This tester Nexus 7 is pre-release. The hardware is final, but the software is not. Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) is currently only out in a developer preview. It’s mostly finished, but there are still some bugs and quirks. Matias Duarte suggested to Gizmodo that some additional features will be announced. We’ll revisit the final version.
It’s a fully-functional, not-terrible £160 tablet. It’s also Google’s first tablet (though the hardware was built by Asus). It’s a Nexus, which means it’s a standard-bearer for the latest version of Android, in this case Android 4.1, a.k.a. Jelly Bean. It’s like the Kindle Fire, if the Kindle Fire was a real tablet. And it’s like the iPad, if the iPad cost half as much and ran Android.
Let’s start with the body (you shallow bastards). The 7-inch form factor is terrific for people who want a very portable tablet. It’s balanced very nicely for one-handed use (say, while standing on a crowded tube), and it weights even less than the Kindle Fire (12 ounces vs. 14.6 ounces). The texturised back feels terrific—almost like a hard leather—soft and smooth but plenty grippy. The whole thing feels very solid, with the hard aluminium around the edges, and scratch-resistant glass from Corning (not Gorilla Glass, though). The only external buttons are a power button and volume rocker. There’s headset and micro USB ports, and four little conductive dots which will be used for accessories (Asus has said that it will be making an audio dock for the Nexus 7 in the months to come).
Once you start playing with it, the Nexus 7 is extremely fast. It has the same 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor and 1GB of RAM as the Asus Transformer Prime (Gizmodo’s current favourite Android tablet), but it’s running Jelly Bean with its “Project Butter.” That translates to a smoother experience than we’ve ever seen on an Android device. There’s virtually no jitter or lag anywhere in the OS. Jelly Bean may be in incremental upgrade from Ice Cream Sandwich, but all of the little things add up to a much improved user experience. The notification panel displays vastly more info. You now have seven customisable icons at the bottom of the homescreen. When dragging an icon or widget to a homescreen, the existing items on that screen will arrange themselves around it. The search function uses Google’s knowledge graph, which is excellent.
Jelly Bean comes with with some new software, including the much-talked-about Google Now. Google Now is basically an organizer with a brain that learns about you the more you use it. Unfortunately it feels very beta right now. If you search for a flight, sometimes a card will be added for it, and sometimes it won’t.
Look at this screen shot. I love that it knows the F train, which will take me home, will leave in 6 minutes and that it will take me 12 minutes to walk there. I didn’t program it to do that. That’s amazing. But then it also shows me the next few times the M103 bus is coming to Bowery/Prince. I’ve never taken that bus in my life, but I’m near it, so it show it to me. I don’t need it, so I swipe it away, and it’s gone. The Nexus 7 also has an NFC chip, which makes swapping photos and media with NFC-enabled phones (or pairing it with the Nexus Q) a breeze.
It’s fast, it’s smooth, it’s portable, and it’s inexpensive. This doesn’t feel like a £160 tablet experience—it feels high-end. The LED-backed IPS screen is bright and colourful. At 1280×720 it has significantly higher pixel density than the first two iPads (216ppi vs. 132ppi), though it isn’t as quite high as the Retina Display on the new iPad (264ppi). Games and movies look really great on it. Speaking of gaming, that’s one of the things the Nexus 7 was built for, and it delivers. In the video below, look at the ripples in the water in Shadowgun as the characters walk around, or the way the cloth reacts to the marbles in Glowball. It takes serious horsepower to render that kind of detail, that smoothly.
Loving the refinements in Jelly Bean. Some are subtle, it’s great. The boosted speed is really noticeable. Google’s new built-in apps are terrific. Play Magazines, for example, gives you a very intuitive and attractive experience. You can flip pages, search through page thumbnails, or even scroll by article. Play Books has a really nice UI now, as does Movies, and the now more channel-centric YouTube app. These all come together in your MyLibrary. In the new Google Maps, looking at street view in Compass Mode is a freaky, future-feeling experience, and the phone now takes voice dictation even when off-line, and it’s impressively accurate.
The 7-inch shape is small enough to slip it in a pocket. You wouldn’t want to wear it in your pants pocket all day, but it’s a nice option to have, and it’ll definitely fit in a jacket pocket or a purse. Also, it has a front-facing camera for video chattin’. It lasted for 9+ hours of battery life with pretty heavy use, so no worries there.
The biggest flaw is that there is no expandable memory slot. As of now, you can get an 8GB version (£159) or a 16GB version (£199). For a something designed for HD media and high-performance games, you can fill that up real, real quick. Another flaw on the hardware side: it only has one speaker, and it’s on the bottom of the device (when it’s in portait mode). If you’re watching or playing a game (in landscape), all of the sound appears to be coming out of the right side. It does not support USB to HDMI connections, which is a bummer because that’s such an easy way to play your media on a TV. Also, it’s unfortunate that it isn’t Gorilla Glass. Our review unit took an unfortunate spill off of a table and landed face down. The screen cracked and it stopped responding to touch. To be fair, it was a pretty hard fall, but you may want to drop £20 on a protective case.
On the software side, Jelly Bean still has some bugs. Screen rotation was locked by default. There were a couple of force closes, and Google Now just doesn’t quite seem to be there yet. That said, this is a developer preview, so this deserves an update when the real deal arrives.
Totally. At £160 there is pretty much no reason to buy a Kindle Fire at all. If you love reading Kindle Books and listening to Amazon MP3, you just install those apps and you’re good to go. It also gives the iPad a good run for its money. You can argue that the iPad is a better tablet, but is it really £200 better? As useful as tablets are, they’re still kind of luxury items. £160 for a full-fledged, seriously-spec’d, fully-capable tablet is an absolute steal. Get it. Seriously.
Google Nexus 7 Specs
OS: Android 4.1
Screen: 7-inch 720p IPS screen
Processor and RAM: 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 / 1GB RAM
Storage: 8GB / 16 GB
Camera: Back: None, Front: 1.2MP
Weight: 340g
Battery: 4325 mAh Li-Ion
Price: £159/8GB, £199/16GB
Giz Rank: 4 Stars
Video by Michael Hession.
For those specs it’s a steal at £160. My Touchpad clearly isn’t as speedy, or have as high a resolution screen, but it does have a larger screen and more storage space (32GB)…intriguing.
To me it looks like a great little device, but I’m not sold on the 7″ form factor for a tablet, it just seems too small to me. 9.7″ seems a better bet. I like to use mine to show people my photos, after all.
#corrections “I’m near it, so it [show] it to me”
“The 7-inch shape is small enough to slip it in a pocket. You wouldn’t want to wear it in your pants pocket all day, but it’s a nice option to have, and it’ll definitely fit in a jacket pocket or a purse.”
Don’t let mr. Biddle hear you say that, he’ll have a fit.
This looks fantastic for the price. My only problem is I don’t know what I’d actually do with a tablet. Maybe for casual web browsing but that’s another charger to add to my snake pit of power cables.
The speaker issue is the same as the ipad. IN landscape, all the sound comes from one side. Have any tablet manufacturers solved this issue?
I’ve got Sony tablet S which has 2 speakers, 1 each side at the bottom in landscape mode (only a 3 way accelerometer in this so you can only have landscape with the slim side down). Sound plays really nicely, great for Netflix in the bath
It’d be awesome if a tablet had one speaker at each corner, then it could flip the stereo at the same time as flipping the screen orientation.
Bang & Olufsen have an iPad dock which does exactly that. It has speakers in all corners and it changes the active speakers based on which way you put it down.
Does it cost silly money?
It’s B&O, so, yes.
I don’t know really. Is 450 quid silly money?
For an dock that costs almost as much as the ipad itself? Maybe.
Corrections, you should have said “a dock” not “an dock”.
Correction, you should have said “a dock” not “an dock”.
Curses! I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for you pesky kids
Hahaha. That made me laugh out loud. I could say it made me lol, but not many people are actually laughing when they type lol.
The main reason I’m looking to get a tablet is to save wear and tear on my laptop. So mainly daily web browsing, watching TV catch-up stuff, listening to internet radio and dipping a toe into the world of e-books, which seems too cumbersome on a laptop. So on the whole this seems great; if I can attach a lightweight external hard drive for trips away from wi-fi connections I guess on reflection I can live with the lack on onboard storage, but not being able to connect to a TV seems like a massive oversight. Is there no way to do this at all? If that’s the case, I’m going to wait a month to see how Amazon’s rumoured Kindle Fire 2 measures up before taking the plunge. If some of the suggested specs turn out to be true – 10 inch screen, metal body instead of plastic, HDMI port – maybe the Nexus 7 isn’t quite as impressive as it seems right now…
Upon reading most of the reviews, the biggest bummer for me was the lack of TV connectivity, but thinking it through after it doesn’t bother me too much as there are other ways to content share including DLNA, and maybe wireless mirroring at some point.
I already have an iPad and an SGS2, but I’m planning to use my Nexus 7 almost purely as a content consumption device. I’ll be sticking my ebooks, comics, kindle and streaming video apps on it, like Netflix, the odd film for travelling with and some simple games and emulators. I plan to use mine out and about moreso than the iPad which is surprisingly cumbersome to take out during my travels to work on the tube. The next 2-3 can’t pass by fast enough!
You took the words out of my mouth.
Good review, mainly because it reviews the Nexus 7 as opposed to comparing every spec with that of the iPad, which has been the failing of this and other sites with other tablets.
Can we get a headcount of all those who have ordered it already?
Indeed- impressed with the quality of journalisim here without me too ism or apples/oranges.
I’ve got an 8gb ordered but may change to the 16gb..
It’s got to be worth going for the 16gb if you can afford it, due to the lack of expandable storage.While Google may want us all to use the cloud, I’d like to use this on my morning commute and even if it had 3G the reception is often crappy, so offline storage is a must.
Agreed, I’ve preordered the 16gig one too. £40 extra isn’t that bad and it’s still a great price for a tablet this powerful. Bear in mind with the 8gig one that only 6gig is useable. That’s a tiny amount of space especially considering HD content.
i would consider it but it’s to small!
I think the size is perfect for games. I agree with the designers that a 10 inch tablet is too cumbersome for gaming.
I’ve order the 16GB 7 on the basis that when your 8GB fills up, you;d happily pay £40 for another 8…
I have an xbox for games.
I have a house for living in. Silly comment.
Have fun using your Xbox whilst out and about.
When i’m out and about i’m either driving or with friends, so no need for mobile gaming, but if i was to mobile game, i suppose i would prefer a larger screen as 7″ isnt even much bigger than my note.
I’ve preordered the 16gb version.
It’ll be my first tablet
Ordered a 16gb version… Xoom is already on Ebay!
I ordered the 16gb one. My first adventure into the world of tablets. Been waiting for ages for one to come along that I couldnt say no to
:/ oh my… it may just convert me over to the dark side again.
I’ve always thought you were a little on the dark side anyway
16GB preordered!
That’s a normal thing to do, the iPad is currently the best and most popular tablet out there so it is used as a base line for comparison
Baseline for comparison I don’t object to. It’s “This product is different to the iPad and is therefore wrong” that I object to. If being the best seller was proof that everything about your product was the best then the Sun is a far better paper that any other in the UK and McDonalds the best restaurant.
Ordered the 8GB. I really don’t plan to be filling it up with movies, music or photos. I might put one or two films on it if I’m catching a flight, but aside from that I don’t really feel the need to spend another £40.
16GB pre-ordered. Tab 10.1 on ebizzle.
Ordered a 16gb yesterday and got myself on google music today
now I just need to figure out how to install google music on the nexus …any tips?
Download from here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1753289
Why thank you squire!
You do realise I’ll be asking you how I install it when my Nexus arrives right?
Sorry, forgot you were an iPhone user. Will be happy to help as will be doing it myself.
Well, I’ve not got it yet obviously but I’m looking forward to learning the in’s and out’s of jelly bean. It’s the first time I’ve had a serious interest in android, it looks pretty slick.
It is. Have it right now on my Galaxy Nexus.
Did you copy this from an old Kindle fire review?
‘Should I Buy It?
Totally. At £160 there is pretty much no reason to buy a Kindle Fire at all. If you love reading Kindle Books and listening to Amazon MP3, you just install those apps and you’re good to go. It also gives the iPad a good run for its money. You can argue that the iPad is a better tablet, but is it really £200 better? As useful as tablets are, they’re still kind of luxury items. £160 for a full-fledged, seriously-spec’d, fully-capable tablet is an absolute steal. Get it. Seriously.’
The second speaker, HDMI-out and expandable storage are noteworthy omissions, but this is a £169 device and they’re premium features (except possibly expandable storage, but Google are trying to push the whole Cloud thing). All three have viable alternatives, albeit at the price of new hardware, but that’s what makes the device so cheap. If you look at the core values of this tablet, it’s second-to-none: the processor is blazingly fast and the screen looks very attractive, and everything else should come as an extra perk.
Alas, I’m probably never gonna get one because it’s 7″. It’s not that I think it’s too small (that said, I dream of 15″ tablets…), but rather I wouldn’t want a second Android device. 7″ is also fairly close to my 4.7″ One X and has the same (albeit slightly underclocked) processor. It’s still a brilliant device perfect for most consumers, but not me I’m afraid.
15″?! Cor Blimey!
I remember when 15″ CRT’s were standard lol… Cant imagine toting something that size around unless it has a permanent fixture somewhere at home. Can see this as a benefit for graphic designers possibly :-/
I now really want someone to mock-up a CRT tablet as if tablets had come around 10 years ago…
Gah I just know as soon as I see this in person I am going to walk out of the store £200 poorer..
I’d have considered this if it wasn’t for the fact I already own a 32gig 3g Galaxy Tab 10.1. Then again, I’ve already filled up 25 gig on it with media so maybe in the end I wouldn’t.
I hope people remember that they won’t get all the 8/16gig on offer, from what I’ve seen on other android devices they’ll be at least a couple of gig taken up by the OS/pre-installed software.
I hope that when the official review happens that the reviewer has a look in settings and see just how much space is available.
“The whole thing feels very solid, with the hard aluminium around the edges”
/methinks its plastic.
I’d buy it in a shot, but I just don’t think I can do without the 3G.
My ageing Galaxy Tab has it in the 7inch form and it’s a great device for being out and about, but it’s starting to really show it’s age.
Any ideas? I don’t fancy carrying around a mifi.
Wifi hotspot on your phone?
The only annoyance with that is that many operators charge you to tether you device to your phone. Bloody cheeky too. You should be allowed to use your data however you want if you’ve paid for it!
This is only a problem if you don’t own an Android phone. If you do, they cannot stop you.
Ah, I’m on an iPhone. Would they really know if I just turned the hotspot on and started using it?
I don’t know if they can detect it, I think they’ll just notice that your data usage has increased compared to normal and just guess that you’re tethering.
I know that my iPhone doesn’t have the option to make a wireless hotspot on orange but my mates does on ’3′ and doen’t pay extra for it. Which is a bit of a punch in the nuts!
I wonder how the carriers actually block it? Can they actually do anything if you have an unbranded phone (and your phone supports it?)
I’ve been looking into that for my upcoming change in contract and according to the internet it is something to do with the APNs they use for tethering and non-tethering contracts. I don’t know how true that is but it is on the internet so it seems pretty credible.
I have spent quite a bit of time recently in hospital and my only form of entertainment has been my Transformer Prime, tethered off my Desire HD and latterly One X. Have not received any complaints from TMobile about my very high data usage. I’m on an unlimited package.
For me this has answered a lot of questions on how I feel about tablets, back when the iPad came out I thought it was stupidly priced.. over £400 for less functionality then my laptop, are you mad!? Only justified by people saying ‘it’s handy’ and ‘easy to use’ … humm to me those two things are not worth spending over £400 quid on.
But don’t get me wrong I’d actually love an iPad, if someone was to hand me one I’d probably be over the moon.. or if I had the spare cash I’d probably get one (but seriously thats the price of a holiday, wouldn’t you rather do that?).
And now this shows up! And you know what? Meh … I feel exactly the same, kinda seems boring and pointless, it’s a massive phone or a less functional laptop (btw if you use a keyboard with any tablet then in my eyes, your a total retard) the fact Apple have been taking people for a ride selling their iPads at an extortionate price may make this seem like a bargain but even with Apple winding their marketing engine up to full speed telling people that they need one still doesn’t make me feel that I need a tablet in my life.
You’re not your
Ironic considering you’re speaking about ‘retards’
“total retard” for paying quite a bit of money for a device… and then using it how it suits you?
No, think you’ve got it a little arse-about-face there… if you purchase something and then don’t use it in a manner which suits your needs in order to satisfy people like you…
My point about the keyboard is if you need a keyboard then buy something with a keyboard like a notebook or a laptop which you could get for less money … these are my opinions and nothing more
I don’t quite get your last statement .. my point is that a tablet wouldn’t suit my needs as I need a keyboard, so I’d buy a laptop. I don’t see the point in spending all that money and adapting a product to be almost as good as something that already exists?
What I’m getting at is that for 95% of the time someone may require/want a tablet. For the other 5% of the time they can adapt the tablet.
If it’s the other way around, buy a laptop/netbook and deal with it for the other 5%… trade off there is money.
Calling someone “a total retard” isn’t an opinion. It’s an insult. And you’re insulting people because it doesn’t fit in with your little world… fine, it doesn’t work for you; that doesn’t mean a damn thing about how other people use it. If they want to use a keyboard with a tablet it makes not one iota of difference to you. So why insult them?
What I mean by my last sentence is, if you don’t purchase something that suits your needs, just because of the opinion of someone else, you’re either a bit shallow or a bit silly. Probably both.
Whoa ok don’t get so worked up! But I’m sorry I can have whatever opinion I want.. I can think that Boris Johnson is a douche or that Riana is an over rated no talented tart … with a nice ass. Some people might get insulted by my opinions, but that’s pretty silly.
Ok read back everything I’ve said “if you don’t purchase something that suits your needs, just because of the opinion of someone else, you’re either a bit shallow or a bit silly. Probably both.” … these are MY opinions, and not someone else’s I don’t think tablets suit my needs! If you don’t agree fine, but I thought I made some fair comments that I don’t see the point in tablets.
I do however agree you make a fair comment if your using it 95% of the time for simple stuff then there isn’t a need to buy a notebook or a laptop (but you’d still be a retard for buying a keyboard for it then! lol … sorry but that is my opinion).
I really didn’t want a flame war, I just thought I had some good comments to share, if I replaced the word ‘retard’ in the original post to ‘son of a silly person’ would we all get along?
No… You can have an opinion and I can agree or disagree. Not a problem.
Tablets aren’t for you. Fine. Not a problem.
Laptops are for you. Fine. Not a problem.
Calling someone a retard, or any other derogatory name because of their preference and/or needs/requirements? No, not okay.
Your discussion was actually quite valid and almost well-thought out and you have indeed made some fair points. But what I’m saying, is that just because someone doesn’t agree with your opinion (About tablets) that doesn’t make them a retard. It’s not even about the word; call someone a wanker, dickhead or anything else… it’s still an insult. And why are you insulting someone… because they think differently to you.
How can I call them silly/stupid/retarded without insulting them in someway or another, if you have a difference of opinion someone if almost bound to get insulted somewhere down the line.
So basically are you annoyed that I used a ‘rude’ word? I should have just called them ‘silly’ … is silly ok with you?
I think this whole debate is pretty, for want of a better word that I’m allowed to say … silly?
Oh FFS.
I’m going to talk to a wall. I’ll get more out of it.
Lulz I win … you retard lol
sigh.
Fuck off wanker.
See – insult. Not opinion.
When expressing opinion, it is good form to consider the positives and negatives of each argument before rationalising a conclusion. All the while you should retain respect for any individual/group that happens to use their own reasoning and personal circumstances to arrive at a differing judgement.
To flatly label people as “retarded” for making what many others would consider a perfectly sane purchasing decision leads those people to believe that the person throwing around the insults is in fact the one who is mentally challenged.
It doesn’t matter which words you’re using (note my correct use of apostrophe); more the aggressive manner in which you are presenting yourself. I advise that you do yourself a favour and keep your frankly asinine “opinions” to yourself until you learn to express yourself like a cognitive, intelligent human-being with the capacity to convey their thoughts in an amicable fashion that reflects the broadly positive nature of discussion that you see on this site.
Can any techies help me with this choice.
I’m either gonna go for this tablet or the Archos g9 101 turbo.
I know it wont be as quality, but has a 10inch screen and expandable memory.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0074495RE/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=computers&psc=1
but the nexus looks like it would just be fun to use.
100% go for the Nexus 7.
If you want it for media storage and playback primarily, then you may as well get the 250GB Archos. Anything you’d spend over the 8GB version for removable storage gives you a 250GB HDD, which if the rest of the hardware will still play the content, can likely be upgraded at a later date.
If you want something that will allow you to get online, and carry some media with you, then get the Nexus 7
Yeah, I’m leaning towards the nexus 7, then when I can grab MS Surface.
I’m just not to sold on a 7″ screen.
Gaaargh! Ordered the 8Gb but now wondering whether I should have gone 16Gb. Seriously though, if you never bought an iPad because they are too pricey (like me) then this seems like a no-brainer. Seems like fantastic value – I remember paying a fortune for a 100Mb harddrive not too many years ago.
I you’re only going to be browsing on it then the 8gb will be ok but if you want to save movies or music etc and install some big games then you’re defo gonna want the 16gb one. You only get 6gb of space to use in the 8gb version. 2gb is used with the OS and other stuff.