Google Nexus 7 Indepth Review

1. Introduction2. Design Exploration and Design, Display3. Android 4.1 Jelly Bean4. Google Now, Voice Search, Keyboard5. Google Chrome, Wireless Connectivity, Multimedia Playback6. Hardware Performance7. Battery Life, Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

ASUS is very familiar with the Android tablet game, in our opinion they produce the best Android tablets out there by combining hardware grunt, design and software functionality and frequent updates. Now, the Taiwanese manufacturer has teamed up with Google to bring all of this to an almost impulse purchase price level at just £159 in a package known as the Nexus 7.

The Nexus 7 originates from the ME370T tablet that was first seen at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier in the year. The trail for this tablet went very dead until strong Nexus 7 rumours started to arise and its eventual unveiling at Google I/O.

The 7 inch tablet starts at $199 (159 GBP) for the 8 GB model and is manufactured by ASUS. Its Nexus tag also denotes that it is directly supported by Google and has primary access to new versions of Android.

Key Specifications

• 7 inch 1280 x 800 LED IPS display
• Corning scratch resistant glass
• NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L 1.2 GHz quad-core processor
• ULP Geforce GPU
• 1 GB of DDR3L RAM
• 8 GB or 16 GB of internal storage
• 1.2 MP front facing camera
• WLAN 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 3.0
• GPS
• NFC
• 4325 mAh, 16 Wh Li-polymer battery
• Weighs 340 grams
• 198.5 x 120 x 10.45 mm
• Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean

Hardware Exploration and Design

The Nexus 7 tablet looks like your standard, and rather bland el-cheapo 7 inch tablet but this is as far as the cheap moniker lasts. Holding it in hand you can tell this is a device worthy of a price higher than its asking price – this is a quality we have come to largely expect from ASUS.

The tablet itself fits and feels well in hand with its rounded corners. It should be said that this is a 7 inch device and navigation with one hand (while holding the tablet up as well) is rather limited. While using two hands does not feel cramped at all.

The front is dominated by the 7 inch IPS display, with rather large bezels surrounding this. While the bezels may appear annoyingly large, they are there for a reason – to prevent accidental screen taps while holding the tablet during standard usage.

This entire face is not protected by Corning Gorilla Glass but is instead layered with some form of scratch resistant glass from Corning. This glass is rather prone to fingerprints and it can make the display look rather awful if not cleaned every week or so.

The top edge in the standard portrait orientation houses the 1.2 MP camera and the light sensor. The single front facing camera isn’t useful for much but it works well for Google+ hangouts. Anything more than this will require you to install this camera launcher from the Play Store.

In order to keep costs in order, the Nexus 7 doesn’t have some seemingly basic things such as a notification LED or vibration motor for haptic feedback. Neither exclusion bothered me overly so, but it is something to be aware of.

The edges of the device are home to some faux-chrome edging, merging to the almost faux-leather rear casing which is really just coated plastic with a golf ball-esque texture. The rear of the device is where some ASUS and larger Nexus branding is found. Also found is the speaker slot – behind which two drivers are found.

The only ports on the Nexus 7 are found on the bottom edge, a MicroUSB jack is located on the lower edge in the centre. It should be said that it doesn’t support MHL, nor does it support USB-OTG without rooting the tablet. The 3.5mm jack is also found near the right corner.

Display

The Nexus 7 has a 7 inch IPS display with a HD resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. This equates to a pixel density of 216 PPI, which is only marginally lower than a 10.1 inch tablet with a Full HD display. The result means that individual pixels are near impossible to spot from normal viewing distances.

The display quality itself is pretty good, as is standard with edge-lit IPS displays there is some degree of backlight bleeding but unless you focus on finding it on a darker background you are highly unlikely to notice it.

Viewing angles on the 7 inch display are good, well, very good as far as standard usage angles up to 100 degrees go. The display’s brightness peak is good but not great, and thus visibility in sunlight is adequate – although there is the attributed battery drain. Meanwhile auto-brightness levels I found to be near perfect.

Colours are good on the Nexus 7’s IPS display although they aren’t quite as saturated as what I would prefer. Greens particularly appear to be lacking. Coming from the Galaxy S III’s Super AMOLED display, it does seem a little bit bland, but on its own merits the Nexus’ display is much better than displays you might expect on a device of this price.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

The $199 tablet from ASUS and Google is a Nexus class device, which means you get completely raw Android, with absolutely no manufacturer or carrier modifications in sight. This is quite a welcome departure from devices I have used in recent times.

Android 4.1 also introduced a new type of user interface display. In Android 4.0 there was the phone interface and then the tablet interface for different device sizes.

With Android 4.1 this has been changed up a bit. While there are still the same classes for both ends of the spectrum there is now something in the middle – as seen on the Nexus 7. It is half phone, half tablet interface with mixed results.

Applications like Gmail look as they would on a larger tablet. While other relatively stock applications such as Google Reader or the Play Store look like a blown-up version of a smartphone.

Improvements made in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean are immediately visible from the lockscreen. There is a new dimple print animation in the lockscreen circle, plus the option to launch directly into Google Now – more on that in a bit.

Security wise, the same old security measures are present but now the face detection option will also look for blinking, although it has already been proven to be easily fooled.

Another new feature is also apparent as soon  as you start to flick through the homescreens. With Project Butter the user interface is now much smoother. I admit that it is not perfect, I have noticed the occasional stutter and slowdown but it is so much smoother than previous versions of Android. As for how it compares to Windows Phone or iOS, I admit to not using those platforms recently enough to compare.

At the bottom of the homescreens you can have up to six applications docked here. Above that is a six by six grid for widgets and app shortcuts. Widgets now relocate themselves automatically. If you want to insert a four grid clock widget, but there is no clear 2×2 space for it, then other widgets will arrange themselves in a way that allows for it to be placed, assuming there is enough space for it in the first place.

At the top of the homescreens is a revamped Google Search bar that links to either Google Now or the improved voice search in Jelly Bean.

Sadly, only portrait orientation is supported in the home screens and app drawer. This has annoyed me on multiple occasions coming from landscape apps and is definitely a con.

Other changes you wouldn’t expect on a tablet is that while there is the three Android buttons (back, home and recent apps) in the bottom taskbar, the notification area has been moved to the top – just like Android smartphones. The Android navigation bar is always visible, only retreating to three dots in apps like games or while watching video in third party applications. The only time I saw it disappear completely was while watching video using the stock video player. Meanwhile the notification bar does disappears under the same conditions.

This can be fixed by tweaking the DPI settings, although that’s above and beyond most users. Preferably this almost “phablet” user interface wouldn’t exist in Jelly Bean and that there would only be the tablet and smartphone options.

Regardless, the notification menu is found at the top of the display and includes options to lock the screen orientation, head to the settings and if it is possible, to clear notifications. In Android 4.1, all notifications are now merged together. So basically there is no different groupings for ongoing notifications and one-off notifications.

With Jelly Bean, notifications can now be expanded to reveal more information. For example a Gmail notification can tell you that there are three new messages, or you can pinch zoom to reveal the subject lines of these three messages. It works well for different scenarios as well.

Multitasking works well on the Nexus 7, and Project Butter does its part. The multitasking, or recent apps overlay has not changed at all in the transition from Android 4.0. I can easily switch between Gmail and Chrome. Although the same process with 3D games is understandably not quite as smooth.

The application drawer is very simple, nothing is complicated here. Each page is occupied by 30 applications while tabs can quickly take you to apps and widgets. Admittedly it would be nice to have some more options here.

Google Now

With Android 4.1, Google introduced Google Now. It can be launched either from the homescreens by tapping the transparent grey search or by swiping up from the home navigation button. In simple terms, if you enable it, it stalks you. It tracks your location and Google searches mostly. While it may seem intrusive, it can be useful.

When I first started up Google Now, it could tell me already how long it would take me to get to work, or in my case school. It offered navigation advice and even does this when I search for a business in Google. A notification will soon appear telling me its address and how long it’ll take to get there.  It will also provide information on calendar events, sports teams, flight information, translations, currency exchange and nearby interesting places.

Does it seem a bit stalker-like? Yes. Am I worried about it? No. Should you? Depends on your mindset.

Each Google Now tile can be swiped away, but will return when new information becomes available.

Voice Search

The abilities that Google Voice Search has gained in Jelly Bean makes it very similar in nature to Apple’s Siri. I have never been in awe of these voice command applications. When I reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S III recently I thought S Voice was a gimmick – I never used it outside of the times I forced myself to use it.

Yet there is something different the new Google search. It is undoubtedly a combination of the closer Google integration, cleaner interface and neat tiles inherited from Google Now.

Voice recognition is impressive and is much better than Samsung’s S Voice. If your search involves some kind of specific information such as the local weather or random facts then it will be display in its own Google Now styled tile. Below this are your standard Google search results.

Other commands include setting an alarm, wanting to navigate or get directions to somewhere and sending email. For a full list of commands refer to this list. Sadly, it does not appear as if you can set calendar appointments at this stage.

Keyboard

The keyboard has been improved in Android 4.1 and takes a few steps towards a fully fledged keyboard such as Swiftkey. This involves improved predictions and it can now guess at what you’re going to say next.

The 7 inch display is also the perfect width for thumb typing. Meanwhile in the landscape orientation you can have a go at some strained thumb typing or some slightly cramped finger typing.

As I mentioned earlier, there is no vibration motor in the Nexus 7, so there is no haptic feedback. Personally I found keypad sound tones to be an equal replacement.

At last I am 85 percent happy with the stock keyboard on the Nexus 7, a first for a device I’ve reviewed in recent times.

Google Chrome

The arrival of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean also marks the arrival of Google Chrome as the default browser. This also doubles as the removal of Adobe’s Flash plug-in from the Android world – which while may seem annoying, I have found it fairly easy to avoid Flash. The recent rehaul of the YouTube app goes a long way to help, and any other Flash content in websites should be avoided regardless of the missing Flash plugin.

The tabbed browsing experience is very good, swiping across the edge of the display switches tabs. While it is also easy to open and close existing tabs. The URL bar is home to quick links to go back/forward, refresh, add page to bookmarks and voice search.

Text reflow is not present, although it isn’t much of a disappointment. A search in page feature is present and works well but you cannot set the default device profile to desktop. This means that even though you have a large enough screen and an HD resolution, you are going to be shown a mobile website by default.

The tab and URL area is always present, occupying some extra pixels that would be well used in a full screen browsing experience.

The presence of Chrome also means that you have full and quick access to your Google account bookmarks and recently opened Chrome tabs on your other devices.

Browser performance is good, scrolling is smooth, although some redraw is noticeable. The same goes for pinch zooming, while extremely smooth there is noticeable amounts of redrawing going on. At the end of the day it really isn’t enough to bother anyone considering the smoothness.

Wireless Connectivity

The Nexus 7 has no cellular connectivity, forcing you to rely on Wi-Fi networks 24/7. It supports WLAN 802.11 b/g/n networks, but only on the more commonplace 2.4 GHz band. As I expected, it was able to fully saturate my internet connection.

Wi-Fi coverage was good and it maintained a connection in every location I would expect it to.

Outside of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and NFC are also supported. These two protocols work together to form Android Beam under Android 4.1. Under the latest version of Android NFC is used to form the connection between devices while Bluetooth is used for faster file transfers. It would be nice to see Wi-Fi Direct used instead for even faster transfers but my guess is time issues or patents got in the way.

It was not faultless by any stretch of the imagination, it took about five tries to send a screenshot from the Nexus 7 to my Samsung Galaxy S III running a CyanogenMod 10 nightly. However, because of that I’m willing to put it down to buggy software on the Samsung rather than an issue with Android itself.

NFC and Android Beam can also be used to share web pages, contacts and applications.

Multimedia Playback

The video experience on the Nexus 7 is immersive although while the speaker is rather impressive for a tablet they cannot match the quality of earphones. I am also pleased to say that the Android navigation buttons disappear during playback.

The stock player on the Nexus 7 can playback MKV and MP4 video files just fine but MOV files will require the assistance of a third party player such as MX Player. Again, if you have a lot of high quality files you are best off using an alternative player.

Hardware Performance

The Nexus 7 is home a NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L quad-core processor clocked at 1.2 GHz. This includes a low power core for basic tasks and the ULP Geforce GPU. This T30L chipset is essentially a lower clocked Tegra 3 part compared to the one found in HTC’s One X smartphone.

There is 1 GB of RAM, of which roughly 975 MB is available to Android. This figure can vary depending upon workload as more RAM is required by the GPU by games.

Internal storage of the Nexus 7 is limited to either 8 or 16 GB, depending upon if you are willing to spend an extra 40 quid for the larger capacity. I have the 16 GB model and available storage is 13.24 GB, while on the smaller model it is a bit under 6 GB.

The Nexus 7’s main rival is the HTC One X. The device from HTC has a higher processor clock speed while the Nexus 7 has a newer and bloat-free software version on its side.

The Nexus 7 won this little shootout in six out of eight benchmarks where both devices have results. The One X’s higher clocks are most apparent in CF-Bench and GLBenchmark Pro – a graphics demo showing its age.

The Samsung Galaxy S III with its Exynos 4412 chipset consistently outperforms the Nexus 7, except in GLBenchmark’s Egypt HD test, where it managed a draw.

The Nexus 7’s performance is top of the line and is quite easily the most powerful device in its price and even size range.

Battery Life

Much of the Nexus 7’s internal space is consumed by the 16 Wh battery and it is certainly big enough to power the tablet for a generous amount of time.

Regardless of the high-end chipset and HD display the battery is good for four to seven hours of display time across a single day. This kind of usage included checking RSS feeds, general browsing, video playback and gaming. This is all with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC and auto brightness enabled.

The Nexus 7 can also be a device that you do not have to charge daily, it has regularly been charged every three days with  four hours of display time under its belt.

This also leads to another thing, idle battery drain is small. I wasn’t expecting miracles coming from the HTC One X (which also has the Tegra 3 chip) which obviously had buggy software or an estranged kernel controlling clock speeds when I reviewed it earlier in the year. You can leave the Nexus 7 overnight and expect it to only drop a few percentile points.

For most people the Nexus 7 should be good for at least two, possibly three days of active usage, but this entirely depends upon your own usage patterns.

While gaming, the rear of the device started to warm slightly but never got concerningly warm.

Closing Thoughts

At the end of my time with the Google Nexus 7 I continue to be impressed by it, even when compared to higher end Android tablets. The 430 gram mass sits well in hand and does not feel overly heavy in hand.

Regardless of its rather cheap appearance, caused mostly by the plastics used, it does feel solid and much more luxurious in hand. This is exactly the same opinion brought about by Samsung’s Galaxy S III.

Display wise, the high definition and relatively dense display impresses, however greens do appear to be undersaturated which can be a put off putting. Also, at least for me, the 7 inch tablet form factor is perfect for me and fits in well with my Samsung Galaxy S III, 13.3 inch student-orientated laptop and gaming desktop. Portrait thumb typing is very straightforward and is aided further by improvements made to the keyboard in Android 4.1.

As you might expect of a new version of an operating system, Android 4.1 is by far the most refined iteration yet. It evolves upon the Holo interface introduced in Android 4.0 and adds many welcome features such as Project Butter resulting in a smoother UI and expandable notifications. These features combine to show off what is arguably the smoothest user interface on an Android device.

Google Now and the improved Voice Search is much more than a gimmicky feature. It is way ahead of Samsung’s S Voice in terms of voice recognition and actual usefulness.

However, I am not a massive fan of the phablet user interface with no landscape orientation. This also results in many basic applications such as the Play Store and Reader, which I know have tablet layouts, instead look like the smartphone versions on a 7 inch display. I have used the true tablet interface on a 7 inch tablet before and would much prefer that.

Much of this can be forgiven as what you have to pure and raw Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and essentially guaranteed early access to at least the next two versions of Android.

The NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset still performs in the top quartile of our performance charts plus you have access to Tegra-exclusive games and effects in games such as Riptide GP and Dead Trigger.

However, it is only available in 8 and 16 GB models with no choice for expandable storage which is bound to ruin much of the experience for some. I’ve been able to live just fine with my 16 GB model with 5 GB storage or more being free at any time. Other compromises include the lack of a rear camera, no vibration motor for haptic feedback and lack of a notification LED.

Battery life was also impressive, and we believe the 16 Wh battery is large enough to last two to three days for most users. The Tegra 3’s chipset helps out with its low power fifth core to cover basic tasks.

Pros

• Feels nice in hand
• Display is of high quality
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Direct access to Android updates
• Tegra 3 chipset continues to impress
• Impressive battery life

Cons

• Phablet user interface
• Limited internal storage

KitGuru says: At $199 (159 GBP) I find it hard to not recommend the Nexus 7. I have found it fit into my usage patterns whether it be for checking RSS feeds, watching movies or reading books. It truly is a premium device (with a few compromises) at an impulse purchase price level.

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