Nexus 7 Review
A couple of years ago, Amazon changed the tablet market when it released the Kindle Fire, with its small screen and even smaller price tag. A few months later, Apple took our eyes to a luxurious spa when it launched the high-resolution iPad.
The 2013 Nexus 7 is very nice. Pick it up, and you'll feel a tablet so light and thin that you'll think there must be some serious compromises on the inside. On the contrary. Power it up, and you'll see the sharpest tablet screen you've ever laid your eyes on. Run a few apps, and you'll experience a screaming-fast device that gives any rival tablet a run for its money. The new Nexus 7 is the real deal. Its combination of portability, display quality, horsepower, and pricing is unprecedented. Its peers live in the future, perhaps only a few months away, but in the future nonetheless. And though it has some compromises, it's probably the least compromised small tablet available today.The Nexus 7 is extremely light. At 290 g (10.23 oz), it's lighter than the original Nexus 7, the iPad mini, and any of Samsung's tablets. It's portability taken to the extreme.
It has a small overall footprint, and is extremely easy for even medium-sized hands to grasp with one hand.
The Nexus 7 is made of plastic, but it doesn't feel cheap. The matte backing feels solid and sturdy. The back corners are nicely sloped, and the tablet feels comfortable in hand. There are no corners jabbing into your hand, as with some rival tablets.
It's thin too. It isn't as thin as the iPad mini (it's actually 21 percent thicker), but there's nothing to worry about there. The Nexus 7 doesn't feel remotely beefy. In fact, it's 17 percent thinner than the 2012 Nexus 7. It isn't the thinnest tablet around, but it's still among the leaders in that category.
There are two cameras this time around (the 2012 model lacked a rear shooter). We're looking at a 5 MP camera on the rear and 1.2 MP on the front. Nothing mind-blowing here, but since we don't use tablets for anything bordering on serious photography, we didn't have any complaints.
The power/sleep button and volume buttons sit right next to each other, on the tablet's upper right side (when holding in portrait mode). They're close enough that you can easily put it to sleep when trying to raise the volume (or vice versa), so it would have been nice to see more spacing there.
The customary 3.5-mm headphone jack and a microUSB port for charging/syncing are the only ports on the Nexus 7.
he new Nexus 7 has a ridiculously sharp display. If you're counting pixels, we're looking at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, spread out over seven inches (measured diagonally). Its 326 pixels per inch (PPI) display is much denser than the iPad's 264 PPI and the Nexus 10's 299 PPI.
Your eyes will appreciate those extra pixels. Text is where it stands out the most, as you can see in the image above. Fonts are razor sharp, and images and videos look great too. There's no reason to hesitate about display sharpness here. It's outstanding.
The iPad mini is one of the Nexus 7's chief rivals, and likely the hottest-selling tablet on the market right now. We can't stress enough how vastly superior the Nexus 7's display quality is. My eyes literally hurt after using the iPad mini's display for extended periods. No such problems with the Nexus 7.
Display size is more of a yellow flag. The Nexus' seven-inch screen with 16:10 aspect ratio isn't unfamiliar. But, like the original Nexus 7, you don't quite get to use that already-small screen's entire landscape. This is due to stock Android's persistent onscreen navigation buttons (back, home, recent apps). When you combine the small screen with those nav buttons, you have a screen with usable area that's much smaller than the iPad mini's, and also smaller than other 7-inch tablets that have physical buttons, like theGalaxy Tab 3.
Is it too small? Not for me, but it could be for some people. We think the iPad mini's 7.9-inch, 4:3 screen is an excellent size, balancing portability and uncompromised real estate. The new Nexus 7, like its predecessor, feels a little bit compromised in that area.
The 2013 Nexus 7's performance, however, is uncompromised. It abandons the Nvidia Tegra 3 found in the original, in favor of Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has 2 GB of RAM.
The Nexus 7 whirred through the benchmarks we threw at it, racking up 2701 in Geekbench (the iPad 4 only scored 1766), and 5546 in Quadrant (much lower than the Galaxy S4's 12066, but faster than most Android tablets).
In terms of experience, we found nothing to complain about with the Nexus 7's performance. Apps launched quickly, multitasking was a breeze, and every 3D-rendered game we threw at it played without any frame rate hiccups. Navigating around Android 4.3 is smooth. The days of Android devices' choppy, inconsistent performance are long gone ... or at least in devices like the Nexus 7, they are.
The 2013 Nexus 7 is very nice. Pick it up, and you'll feel a tablet so light and thin that you'll think there must be some serious compromises on the inside. On the contrary. Power it up, and you'll see the sharpest tablet screen you've ever laid your eyes on. Run a few apps, and you'll experience a screaming-fast device that gives any rival tablet a run for its money. The new Nexus 7 is the real deal. Its combination of portability, display quality, horsepower, and pricing is unprecedented. Its peers live in the future, perhaps only a few months away, but in the future nonetheless. And though it has some compromises, it's probably the least compromised small tablet available today.The Nexus 7 is extremely light. At 290 g (10.23 oz), it's lighter than the original Nexus 7, the iPad mini, and any of Samsung's tablets. It's portability taken to the extreme.
It has a small overall footprint, and is extremely easy for even medium-sized hands to grasp with one hand.
The Nexus 7 is made of plastic, but it doesn't feel cheap. The matte backing feels solid and sturdy. The back corners are nicely sloped, and the tablet feels comfortable in hand. There are no corners jabbing into your hand, as with some rival tablets.
It's thin too. It isn't as thin as the iPad mini (it's actually 21 percent thicker), but there's nothing to worry about there. The Nexus 7 doesn't feel remotely beefy. In fact, it's 17 percent thinner than the 2012 Nexus 7. It isn't the thinnest tablet around, but it's still among the leaders in that category.
There are two cameras this time around (the 2012 model lacked a rear shooter). We're looking at a 5 MP camera on the rear and 1.2 MP on the front. Nothing mind-blowing here, but since we don't use tablets for anything bordering on serious photography, we didn't have any complaints.
The power/sleep button and volume buttons sit right next to each other, on the tablet's upper right side (when holding in portrait mode). They're close enough that you can easily put it to sleep when trying to raise the volume (or vice versa), so it would have been nice to see more spacing there.
The customary 3.5-mm headphone jack and a microUSB port for charging/syncing are the only ports on the Nexus 7.
he new Nexus 7 has a ridiculously sharp display. If you're counting pixels, we're looking at 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, spread out over seven inches (measured diagonally). Its 326 pixels per inch (PPI) display is much denser than the iPad's 264 PPI and the Nexus 10's 299 PPI.
Your eyes will appreciate those extra pixels. Text is where it stands out the most, as you can see in the image above. Fonts are razor sharp, and images and videos look great too. There's no reason to hesitate about display sharpness here. It's outstanding.
The iPad mini is one of the Nexus 7's chief rivals, and likely the hottest-selling tablet on the market right now. We can't stress enough how vastly superior the Nexus 7's display quality is. My eyes literally hurt after using the iPad mini's display for extended periods. No such problems with the Nexus 7.
Display size is more of a yellow flag. The Nexus' seven-inch screen with 16:10 aspect ratio isn't unfamiliar. But, like the original Nexus 7, you don't quite get to use that already-small screen's entire landscape. This is due to stock Android's persistent onscreen navigation buttons (back, home, recent apps). When you combine the small screen with those nav buttons, you have a screen with usable area that's much smaller than the iPad mini's, and also smaller than other 7-inch tablets that have physical buttons, like theGalaxy Tab 3.
Is it too small? Not for me, but it could be for some people. We think the iPad mini's 7.9-inch, 4:3 screen is an excellent size, balancing portability and uncompromised real estate. The new Nexus 7, like its predecessor, feels a little bit compromised in that area.
The 2013 Nexus 7's performance, however, is uncompromised. It abandons the Nvidia Tegra 3 found in the original, in favor of Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, clocked at 1.5 GHz. It has 2 GB of RAM.
The Nexus 7 whirred through the benchmarks we threw at it, racking up 2701 in Geekbench (the iPad 4 only scored 1766), and 5546 in Quadrant (much lower than the Galaxy S4's 12066, but faster than most Android tablets).
In terms of experience, we found nothing to complain about with the Nexus 7's performance. Apps launched quickly, multitasking was a breeze, and every 3D-rendered game we threw at it played without any frame rate hiccups. Navigating around Android 4.3 is smooth. The days of Android devices' choppy, inconsistent performance are long gone ... or at least in devices like the Nexus 7, they are.
Written and Posted by:PRERNA ARORA
