Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon in a bit front pocket now calm and this is our full review of the Nexus 7 tablet let's get to it it says it right on the box this tablet is made for Google Play but really the Nexus 7 is made for two groups of people as we mentioned in our unboxing first it's made for what we call the granny group that is people that want things to be simple and easy the granny group want a great out of box experience the second group that the Nexus 7 is made for is the power user those that want to be able to customize every aspect of their device have the fastest software possible and be able to upgrade their device with third-party tweaks Motz and roms whether you're a part of the first or second group the Nexus 7's price tag of 199 or 249 is extremely attractive our review will mostly target the second group of the power user let's start off talking about hardware the seven inch form factor for many is a sweet spot and better alternative to the 10 inch tablets that reign supreme at 7 inches the tablet becomes narrow enough to wear portrait typing is very comfortable also at 7 inches the device can be lightweight enough to feel unsubstantial which is critical when reading watching video or using a tablet for a long period of time our Nexus 7 came from Google i/o and thus has the white backing everyone else that buys the Nexus 7 through Google Play will get the grey bag if you really like the white chances are you'll be able to buy a white backing from a third party as the white component is just a back cover that is probably easy to remove and change the back cover whether white or grey is a fantastic dimpled texture that helps tremendously to make the device feel comfortable and steady in hand it's made from a rubbery plastic here on the back we see a big Nexus logo plus Asus branding on the bottom the speaker below the Asus branding was unremarkable like most tablets it's relatively quiet and sounds tinny on the bottom here we have a micro USB charging port plus a 3.5 millimeter headphone plug on the side we have a power button and volume rocker the power button protrudes away from the body of the Nexus 7 making it easy to feel for unfortunately because the front of the neck seven is so symmetrical we found ourselves often picking up the tablet from the wrong end and missing the power button the front-facing camera is really the only way to tell which end is the time in terms of wait the Nexus 7 is one of the lightest tablets on the market lending to an especially comfortable experience when holding it for long periods of content viewing the Nexus 7 might have the appearance of thinness but it's really not at ten point five millimeters thick Google and Asus was able to create the illusion of thinness thanks to this sharp edge but in hand when you wrap your fingers around the back of the Nexus 7 there's definitely a fair amount of thickness to it let's talk about the display it's a 1280 by 800 7 inch LCD panel if you're using a Galaxy Nexus or any other device with an AMOLED screen you're likely to find the screen of the Nexus 7 to be washed out and lacking contrast and adequate color saturation in comparison we characterized the display on the Nexus 7 as dull because of this that said thanks to a reasonable PPI of 2:14 text a sharp and crisp even though you can't still see pixels if you look closely in terms of other specs the Nexus 7 is the first 7-inch tablet with a quad-core CPU it has a Tegra 3 1.3 gigahertz CPU and google claims that there are 12 yes 12 GPU cores inside you'll also find a gigabyte of RAM and either eight gigs or 16 gigs of storage because of the low price point some compromises had to be made for example there is no microSD storage also there are no cellular data options which severely hampers the portability of the Nexus 7 the Nexus 7 has the newest version of Android version 4.1 jellybean while we've talked a lot about jellybean and be sure to check out our tour of jelly bean on the Galaxy Nexus will cover the features of jellybean that most impact the experience on the Nexus 7 let's turn the device on here on the home screen we can begin to see the dichotomy between the two intended audiences of the Nexus 7 the grannie gripping the power user out of the box the Nexus 7 presents you with content from Google Play lots and lots of content and jellybean there are several new widgets that give you a Nuke tablet like experience but putting movies TV shows magazines books and songs at your here I've got two home screens showing my movies and TV content my music some recommendations and so on all of the Google Play content widgets are pre-made as a kind of mosaic of all your content you can't for instance pick which books or shows go on your home screen like you can with the Nook Tablet it just kind of randomizes the order and to help you get started on google play you get a twenty five dollar store credit as soon as you activate the Nexus 7 with your Google account this works seamlessly and you'll get an email telling you that the credit has been added now what if you don't want to buy content from Google Play fortunately since this is Android you have a lot of choice if you rather stream your movies from Netflix that's fine get the Netflix app if you rather stream music from Spotify that's fine get the Spotify app unlike the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire you have complete freedom to get content however you choose here in the center I have a home screen that makes a lot more sense to me as a power user it's clean and simple and neatly organized with a handful of folders from my most used apps and also a battery widget at the top I have some remaining space where I might place an email widget or other something else you're likely to notice is that Google used a phone layout for the Nexus 7 meaning the notification shade is at the top instead of the bottom this reminds us a lot of the first Galaxy Tab which was based off of Gingerbread frankly we kind of liked having the notifications on the bottom in which wish there was a way to switch it on the Nexus 7 now let's talk about jellybean we're going to cover two areas that impact the Nexus 7 the most the first is project butter and the second is notifications in all previous versions of Android there was an unexplainable lag in a lot of places like opening the app drawer the task switcher and so on project butter aims to fix that by forcing the entire UI to operate at a high frame rate and also to prioritize touch input so that the system anticipates your touches and make sure that the system is as responsive as possible we're happy to report that this has made a huge difference in the overall fluidity of Android everything feels well buttery smooth with the exception of the occasional hiccup most notably in the web browser which might be a result of early software the second feature of Android 4.1 we want to as notifications notifications appear where they do for a phone the shade has been redesigned to allow notifications to give you more information like email previews and action buttons we really won't see the full utility of this feature until developers update their apps notifications can now be expanded and contracted with an awkward to finger gesture now let's get into the actual use of the tablet on the Nexus 7 you can now read magazines you can actually read magazines on any Android device now as long as your Google Play has received the update which is nice because if you buy a magazine on your tablet you can read it later on your phone although at this time the page is not synchronized but reading magazines on the Nexus 7 is a little bit awkward they'll bit better than on the Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire because they have lower resolution screens here in the Play magazine app we can flip through the magazines that I've bought most of which have a free trial so you can try it before you buy it the selection of magazines in Google Play is a bit thin at the moment clicking on a magazine will take you into a horizontally scrollable list of pages just like you get on the Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire you can use the usual page navigation tools on the bottom like thumbnail previews and a table of contents pop out you can view an article in a text view which is nice because the display on the Nexus 7 isn't high resolution enough to be able to read most magazines at the entire zoomed out view there's a lot of pinching and zooming to be done if you want to get the full content of the article beyond magazines Nexus 7 does a pretty good job at playing back 720p video with good frame rates though you'll see black bars on the top and the bottom that said if you rather purchase your content and download it then stream it you'll be excited to see that Google Play now has TV shows right now the selection is limited let's talk about gaming as mentioned Google claimed that the Nexus 7 has 1212 GPU cores so we were expected to be blown away by gaming we use Tegra zone to find titles optimized for the Tegra 3 CPU such as Shadowgun and Zen Pinball here in Shadowgun gaming performance looked quite good but it's obvious that the game is not optimized for the 1280 by 800 display because we saw quite a bit of artifacting in Zen Pinball we had much better results then in gta3 we once again saw quite a bit of artifacting but performance was generally good but not amazing overall the Nexus 7 is one of the best gaming tablets around but we think Google over hyped it as the ultimate gaming machine now let's talk a bit about web browsing the default browser on the Nexus 7 is chrome those that use Chrome on the desktop will enjoy tabbed bookmark and password synchronization we're also really digging the side swipe gesture that lets you switch between tabs without having to tap on the tabs at the top under heavy use case scenarios with many tabs open and while NIT navigating a graphically intense webpage Chrome did indeed stutter and lag again this might have to do with the fact that chrome is still new and jellybean is not totally finalized but we were at times disappointed with the web browsing performance when pushing the limits of the tablet finally let's talk about some test notes first battery life google claims 8 to 10 hours of battery life on the Nexus 7 after 2 days of use with about 3 hours of use on each day my Nexus 7 ran out of juice that included a lot of game playing and video watching with average used battery life should be in the 8 to 10 hour range that is advertised we also noticed that the Nexus 7 takes a particularly long time to charge perhaps even a bit longer than the iPad 3 which takes seven hours to go from zero to 100% so here's what we like and what we don't like about the Nexus 7 we like that it has a fantastic price we like that overall it provides great performance and fluidity and all apps and while navigating the OS and finally we will like that the tablet feels fantastic in hand often reminding us of a paperback book with its lightweight what we don't like is that the screen appears dull and washed out we don't like that the device takes nearly 7 hours to charge and we don't like that there is no microSD storage plus no option for cellular data we give the Nexus 7 a four and a half out of five stars so in conclusion while there are several compromises you have to live with with the Nexus 7 such as a screen that is overall dull no microSD storage and no sight data options it's a hundred and ninety-nine bucks and it's fast and it works very very well end to end it can't be beat it's a Kindle Fire killer although the kinder fought fire too should be out relatively soon but standing by itself the Nexus 7 is an awesome tablet and if you pre-ordered one you can feel confident but it's a fast capable tablet that that is an extremely good value if you liked this video please give us a thumbs up and thanks for watching that's it for now you