Gadgetory

on the outside there's a lot to like about Google's Nexus 7 tablet is a great-looking 7-inch display runs jelly bean and sports a two-hundred-dollar price tag but as I'm going to show you today there's also a lot to like on the inside I'm bill detwiler and this is cracking open the first thing I really like about the Nexus 7 is how easy it is to open like the Kindle Fire and unlike the iPad the back cover just pops right off giving you easy access to the tablets internal hardware now the battery isn't soldered to the motherboard and it's easily removed the speaker assembly headphone jack and USB connector can all be disconnected and replaced even the camera upper microphone motherboard and internal frame aren't difficult to remove I only have two real complaints about the tablets construction first a sous used two large pieces of what looks like copper alloy shielding one covering part of the motherboard and the cable for the headphone jack and USB connector and one covering the display connector you must be careful not to tear these shields when removing them second the display and front glass panel are fused together if one breaks you'll need to replace them both so how does the nexus 7 stack up against the other big $200 tablet out there Amazon's Kindle Fire well there's no doubt that Google's tablet has the edge on Hardware it has a one point three gigahertz quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor 1 gig of low voltage ddr3 RAM and comes in either 8 or 16 gig models the fire on the other hand has a dual core 1 gigahertz TI omap processor 512 megs of ram and only comes in an eight gig model given however that amazon will likely release an updated fire later this year and Apple may introduce a smaller cheaper iPad the Nexus 7 may not be the most powerful 7-inch tablet for long despite all its positives asus and Google did sacrifice a few features to keep the Nexus 7's price so low there's no rear camera no hdmi out no cellular data option and no memory card slot but given that you can buy an eight gig model for 199 and a 16 gig model for 249 you definitely get a lot of bang for your buck now for more information on the Nexus 7 including performance and battery life benchmark tests check out Eric Franklin's full cnet review and to see more teardown photos and read my full hardware analysis go to techrepublic com forward slash cracking open I'm bill detwiler thanks for watching