Jayce
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So I lucked out and got a Nexus 7 a few days ago... I've been using it pretty much continuously ever since. While this is my first tablet, I have used tablets quite a lot because for a time I was testing them to see how useful they were in the educational environment. While tablets are great, there's a reason I've never bought one: they're too damn expensive for what you get. Period, done over, I'll argue that until the year 30000. Yes they're more mobile, but what you get vs what you pay is not the same as a laptop. With that being said, as somebody who currently has a 10" iPad, 8.9" Galaxy Tab, and 7" rooted CM7 Nook Color on his desk, along with his newly purchased Nexus 7, I can say the first tablet worth the money is here.
Basic specs - Quad core CPU, 12 core GPU, 8 GB memory ($200) or 16 GB memory ($250), and a resolution on a 7" screen than what most 10" tablets have. To say this thing is stacked is an understatement. Now, before I keep sipping the kool aid, let's talk about how this tablet sucks.
This tablet lacks two things that may be extremely useful to some people. For one, it does not have HDMI. What I mean is, IT DOES NOT HAVE HDMI. No, there's no hack for it, there's no magical work around, there's no custom ROM. It does not have the hardware to support HDMI. I understand there are some extreme hardware hackers out there who are looking into adding hardware support by soldering a chip on or something like that... I don't know... I've never even used HDMI on a laptop so this lack of feature didn't phase me in the slightest.
It is also lacking a micro SD card slot, which may burn some people. I for one was not happy about the lack of a micro SD card. I did dig up some resources where Android developers were talking about the issues and frustrations with having micro SD card media on tablets. I can't quote everything I read offhand, but as I read through the articles, things began to make sense in terms of why they would choose to sway away from micro SD cards. I am however noticing that there are some tablets coming out that lack micro SD card slots, which makes me wonder if this is a sign of the future to come. At this point, I naturally I began to take some things into consideration. My fiance and I have a honeymoon planned this October. I don't have a personal laptop right now besides a CR-48 running Ubuntu (Intel Atom, 16GB SSD), so it's hardly a workhorse. I began thinking, hmm, what if I could get this tablet stacked with movies/concerts/media/whatever and take it with me so we can burn up some airport/flight time? Of course 16GB leaves me a little limited with how extensive my media library can be... however after I did some quick thinking about how much I'd like to have with me, I began to realize even a 64GB tablet wouldn't fly, as I'd of course want to plan accordingly for all of the flight time/airport wait time/potential layovers we may run into. Don't get me wrong, cloud services are great too. With Google Music, I can't even tell which music is local and which is on my Google Music account - it's that seamless. Problem is in my particular situation I didn't want to have to rely on any sort of cloud service for media since wifi might be hard to come by when traveling. Sure, it's in airports, but what about airplanes? It's sure not on every single airplane out there, not to mention some wifi hotspots you run into when traveling cost quite a bit to use for a limited time. At home... oh yes I'll eat it up at home. I love LAN-based streaming. That said, on the local storage front I've discovered a few things that I've already covered in the external storage devices thread, but this is the basic synopsis:
Android (not sure when it started - maybe 4.0?) at the kernel level supports USB OTG (on the go). This means you can connect USB devices to the tablet via a USB OTG cable (yes, OTG is a special cable - it uses 5 pins internally instead of 4). Keyboard/mouse work out of the box on the Nexus 7. What this tablet is lacking is the onboard ability to mount storage devices. Think of it like this... your system supports USB flash drives (meaning when plugged in, it can see - oh - flash drive) but it doesn't know how to mount them. I can only imagine this was a subtle push for Google to get people into more cloud oriented services however, Google is not completely foolish and they know a great degree people like Nexus devices and don't want them neutered to the max like some other devices out there, so if you root the device and utilize StickMount (easy to use and it's free on google play) it basically gives you the "sudo mount /dev/sda /media/storage" Linux-esque functionality. Curve ball, it requires root. The plus side is rooting devices these days is often a 1 click process, especially on Nexus devices. Now instead, once I root and fire up USB OTG, I can hook up any array of flash drives I want. Some people have posted saying external hard drives (if low powered enough) work fine. Crossing my fingers my 500GB external HDD will work... That way I'll be able to continually offload media onto the tablet, at which point I'll likely unmount the hard drive (no use letting it plugged in using battery power) and just utilize the media from the onboard storage. While this is a bit less convenient than micro SD cards, it gives me a huge bonus that micro SD cards couldn't do unless I bought 10 of them - a magnitude of extra space to swap files around. Since I would only utilize this functionality in short bursts and then just unmount the device and put it away, I figured it's a solid feature to have and be aware of. For the majority of the day to day usage where I won't be watching HD movies, I doubt I'll even use half of the space on this device. I currently have what I want on the device that I would use day to day, including some pictures, email, apps, games, and a few nearby state maps (via offline NavFree) that I most frequently travel, and I'm still sitting @ 11.5GB free... Not too shabby when you consider that ~13.5GB is what is accessible out of the 16GB once you factor in the space the OS takes. Of course, your mileage may vary, especially if you're media hungry and want to have 1080P variants of your favorite movies on hand at all times.
Battery life - so far this thing is solid with battery life. I have been pleasantly pleased with how much content I can watch and the battery is still holding strong. I've had it two days, only charged it once when I unboxed it, and I've been using it heavily. That said, I'm almost out of juice. Overall, the battery life was better than I expected. I thought for sure a quad core tablet would consume battery juice like no other, but so far it's been decent.
GPS - oh yes, we have a GPS unit. But how is it that usable if we don't have offline turn by turn navigation with Google's Nav service? Ahh, get that service out of your head. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but Google dragging their feet to make it truly offline has resulted in other Navigation alternatives popping up, such as Sygic, NavFree, etc. I tested NavFree and I find it decent. While I didn't dive too heavily into the features of the app, I paid close attention to the GPS accuracy. It was spot on. I've also heard reports that unlike phones, this tablet has a TRUE GPS chip. Oh yes, you basically have a Garmin... in a 7 inch tablet... for nearly the same price. What the? I look forward to road trips later this summer, as I plan to get a 7" tablet mount for the car. Oh no, I'm not going to be crazy and hang it from the windshield, but it'll be nice to have it mounted up in the cockpit area of the car for easy viewing, likely on the air vents or in the front of the center console. We'll see what mount manufacturers brew up.
Speaking of easy viewing... viewing angles are great on this device. Not really sure what else to say on that front. The screen is beautiful at well. Colors are vibrant, things look solid. Thanks to the horsepower under the hood, there's no lag in anything I have done so far. I haven't exactly played Battlefield 3 on it, but what I have done has been completely seamless.
Google Voice - oh my GOSH this feature is surprisingly accurate. One thing I love about it is as you're talking, it's typing the words, so you can see how accurate it is on the fly. Before I used to have to talk, say a prayer, and hope it returned the accurate line I just spoke, often which it did not. This responds excellently and if I go back after speaking, I can easily swap a word by tapping on it. For example, earlier I had tried to say a sentence which contained "there buddy" in it (as in, 'did you give those dishes a good washing there buddy?'), and it came back as "their body." I tapped "their" and it came up with alternative options, as if it knew I may have possibly meant there buddy. With one click, it replaced both words.
Layout - I really dig the layout of the tablet. By default the interface is locked in portrait mode only at the home screen, which some people aren't a fan of. Quite honestly, I prefer it that way... I never really liked landscape mode at all except for videos or the oddball app that just happened to look better that way. The "dock" area is easy to manage, and allows me to group items very seamlessly by just drag/drop on one another. This is significantly easier than my 2.3.5 phone which requires a specific launcher to even support this capability. Very happy with these new features. Of course, there's the widget piece as well. I love being connected to work. I don't just mean work as in my job, but work in general. I love being organized, and having two vertical widgets (1 work email, 1 personal gmail) along with my calendar containing both accounts (color coded - red personal, blue work) in one screen is just beautiful to me. It's nice being able to quickly see what email just came in without even opening the email app. This can also be done in the notification bar at the top, which in itself is very nice. It's much easier to swipe to cross off notifications than it was on my phone. Granted, my phone is one of the lowest end Androids you can get, so maybe I'm still in the stone age in that respect. Even still, it's a feature I took notice of.
Build quality - well, it's solid. I hear no creaking, no blemishes of any sort, just really fine tuned curves and straight lines. The weight is very acceptable and the 7" screen (7-8" is my personal favorite for tablets) is spot on. The sound quality is very acceptable for a tablet (comparable to what I've heard in most laptops) as well.
Android 4.1.1 - Pretty self explanatory... not sure what else to say there!
Accessories - I've had some difficulty finding accessories for it so far, but that's to be expected with this being such a recent release. I did end up buying an iPad screen protector at Five Below (like a glorified dollar store with a different array of things) and cut it to size after making a paper-cut out sized perfectly. I used the wet application method, which made me incredibly nervous. After I watched 5 or 6 YouTube videos on it, I figured, why not... according to users (which I believe now that I've done it), applying screen protectors via wet method makes dust bubbles difficult to come by, and it is actually easier. Thanks to the few drops of soap in the water, you have enough flexibility to move the protector around on the screen until you get it where you need it, then do the credit card thing to squeeze out the slightly soapy water (don't forget to have paper towels handy at the edges to catch the fluid). Overall, decent method. I have a real Nexus 7 protector coming from Amazon in the next week or two... I just did the custom cut iPad thing so I had a temporary/cheap protector until that time comes. I'm sure in due time we'll see more accessories in B&M stores nearby.
Summary - FINALLY, a tablet that is priced with some degree of logic. Even when you take the cons into consideration, this is easily the best tablet I've used. Might I throw a reminder on the table, I have 3 other tablets (iPad, Galaxy Tab, Nook Color) on my desk right now... there's no contest. Sure, some of this may be somewhat unfair because the Nexus 7 came out days ago, whereas the other devices have been here for some time, but I'm still calling it as I see it.
Side note - I still can't believe I'm actually using a tablet... I never thought this would happen. Don't get me wrong, under absolutely no circumstances is my laptop going anywhere, but this thing sure is snazzy.
Basic specs - Quad core CPU, 12 core GPU, 8 GB memory ($200) or 16 GB memory ($250), and a resolution on a 7" screen than what most 10" tablets have. To say this thing is stacked is an understatement. Now, before I keep sipping the kool aid, let's talk about how this tablet sucks.
This tablet lacks two things that may be extremely useful to some people. For one, it does not have HDMI. What I mean is, IT DOES NOT HAVE HDMI. No, there's no hack for it, there's no magical work around, there's no custom ROM. It does not have the hardware to support HDMI. I understand there are some extreme hardware hackers out there who are looking into adding hardware support by soldering a chip on or something like that... I don't know... I've never even used HDMI on a laptop so this lack of feature didn't phase me in the slightest.
It is also lacking a micro SD card slot, which may burn some people. I for one was not happy about the lack of a micro SD card. I did dig up some resources where Android developers were talking about the issues and frustrations with having micro SD card media on tablets. I can't quote everything I read offhand, but as I read through the articles, things began to make sense in terms of why they would choose to sway away from micro SD cards. I am however noticing that there are some tablets coming out that lack micro SD card slots, which makes me wonder if this is a sign of the future to come. At this point, I naturally I began to take some things into consideration. My fiance and I have a honeymoon planned this October. I don't have a personal laptop right now besides a CR-48 running Ubuntu (Intel Atom, 16GB SSD), so it's hardly a workhorse. I began thinking, hmm, what if I could get this tablet stacked with movies/concerts/media/whatever and take it with me so we can burn up some airport/flight time? Of course 16GB leaves me a little limited with how extensive my media library can be... however after I did some quick thinking about how much I'd like to have with me, I began to realize even a 64GB tablet wouldn't fly, as I'd of course want to plan accordingly for all of the flight time/airport wait time/potential layovers we may run into. Don't get me wrong, cloud services are great too. With Google Music, I can't even tell which music is local and which is on my Google Music account - it's that seamless. Problem is in my particular situation I didn't want to have to rely on any sort of cloud service for media since wifi might be hard to come by when traveling. Sure, it's in airports, but what about airplanes? It's sure not on every single airplane out there, not to mention some wifi hotspots you run into when traveling cost quite a bit to use for a limited time. At home... oh yes I'll eat it up at home. I love LAN-based streaming. That said, on the local storage front I've discovered a few things that I've already covered in the external storage devices thread, but this is the basic synopsis:
Android (not sure when it started - maybe 4.0?) at the kernel level supports USB OTG (on the go). This means you can connect USB devices to the tablet via a USB OTG cable (yes, OTG is a special cable - it uses 5 pins internally instead of 4). Keyboard/mouse work out of the box on the Nexus 7. What this tablet is lacking is the onboard ability to mount storage devices. Think of it like this... your system supports USB flash drives (meaning when plugged in, it can see - oh - flash drive) but it doesn't know how to mount them. I can only imagine this was a subtle push for Google to get people into more cloud oriented services however, Google is not completely foolish and they know a great degree people like Nexus devices and don't want them neutered to the max like some other devices out there, so if you root the device and utilize StickMount (easy to use and it's free on google play) it basically gives you the "sudo mount /dev/sda /media/storage" Linux-esque functionality. Curve ball, it requires root. The plus side is rooting devices these days is often a 1 click process, especially on Nexus devices. Now instead, once I root and fire up USB OTG, I can hook up any array of flash drives I want. Some people have posted saying external hard drives (if low powered enough) work fine. Crossing my fingers my 500GB external HDD will work... That way I'll be able to continually offload media onto the tablet, at which point I'll likely unmount the hard drive (no use letting it plugged in using battery power) and just utilize the media from the onboard storage. While this is a bit less convenient than micro SD cards, it gives me a huge bonus that micro SD cards couldn't do unless I bought 10 of them - a magnitude of extra space to swap files around. Since I would only utilize this functionality in short bursts and then just unmount the device and put it away, I figured it's a solid feature to have and be aware of. For the majority of the day to day usage where I won't be watching HD movies, I doubt I'll even use half of the space on this device. I currently have what I want on the device that I would use day to day, including some pictures, email, apps, games, and a few nearby state maps (via offline NavFree) that I most frequently travel, and I'm still sitting @ 11.5GB free... Not too shabby when you consider that ~13.5GB is what is accessible out of the 16GB once you factor in the space the OS takes. Of course, your mileage may vary, especially if you're media hungry and want to have 1080P variants of your favorite movies on hand at all times.
Battery life - so far this thing is solid with battery life. I have been pleasantly pleased with how much content I can watch and the battery is still holding strong. I've had it two days, only charged it once when I unboxed it, and I've been using it heavily. That said, I'm almost out of juice. Overall, the battery life was better than I expected. I thought for sure a quad core tablet would consume battery juice like no other, but so far it's been decent.
GPS - oh yes, we have a GPS unit. But how is it that usable if we don't have offline turn by turn navigation with Google's Nav service? Ahh, get that service out of your head. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but Google dragging their feet to make it truly offline has resulted in other Navigation alternatives popping up, such as Sygic, NavFree, etc. I tested NavFree and I find it decent. While I didn't dive too heavily into the features of the app, I paid close attention to the GPS accuracy. It was spot on. I've also heard reports that unlike phones, this tablet has a TRUE GPS chip. Oh yes, you basically have a Garmin... in a 7 inch tablet... for nearly the same price. What the? I look forward to road trips later this summer, as I plan to get a 7" tablet mount for the car. Oh no, I'm not going to be crazy and hang it from the windshield, but it'll be nice to have it mounted up in the cockpit area of the car for easy viewing, likely on the air vents or in the front of the center console. We'll see what mount manufacturers brew up.
Speaking of easy viewing... viewing angles are great on this device. Not really sure what else to say on that front. The screen is beautiful at well. Colors are vibrant, things look solid. Thanks to the horsepower under the hood, there's no lag in anything I have done so far. I haven't exactly played Battlefield 3 on it, but what I have done has been completely seamless.
Google Voice - oh my GOSH this feature is surprisingly accurate. One thing I love about it is as you're talking, it's typing the words, so you can see how accurate it is on the fly. Before I used to have to talk, say a prayer, and hope it returned the accurate line I just spoke, often which it did not. This responds excellently and if I go back after speaking, I can easily swap a word by tapping on it. For example, earlier I had tried to say a sentence which contained "there buddy" in it (as in, 'did you give those dishes a good washing there buddy?'), and it came back as "their body." I tapped "their" and it came up with alternative options, as if it knew I may have possibly meant there buddy. With one click, it replaced both words.
Layout - I really dig the layout of the tablet. By default the interface is locked in portrait mode only at the home screen, which some people aren't a fan of. Quite honestly, I prefer it that way... I never really liked landscape mode at all except for videos or the oddball app that just happened to look better that way. The "dock" area is easy to manage, and allows me to group items very seamlessly by just drag/drop on one another. This is significantly easier than my 2.3.5 phone which requires a specific launcher to even support this capability. Very happy with these new features. Of course, there's the widget piece as well. I love being connected to work. I don't just mean work as in my job, but work in general. I love being organized, and having two vertical widgets (1 work email, 1 personal gmail) along with my calendar containing both accounts (color coded - red personal, blue work) in one screen is just beautiful to me. It's nice being able to quickly see what email just came in without even opening the email app. This can also be done in the notification bar at the top, which in itself is very nice. It's much easier to swipe to cross off notifications than it was on my phone. Granted, my phone is one of the lowest end Androids you can get, so maybe I'm still in the stone age in that respect. Even still, it's a feature I took notice of.
Build quality - well, it's solid. I hear no creaking, no blemishes of any sort, just really fine tuned curves and straight lines. The weight is very acceptable and the 7" screen (7-8" is my personal favorite for tablets) is spot on. The sound quality is very acceptable for a tablet (comparable to what I've heard in most laptops) as well.
Android 4.1.1 - Pretty self explanatory... not sure what else to say there!
Accessories - I've had some difficulty finding accessories for it so far, but that's to be expected with this being such a recent release. I did end up buying an iPad screen protector at Five Below (like a glorified dollar store with a different array of things) and cut it to size after making a paper-cut out sized perfectly. I used the wet application method, which made me incredibly nervous. After I watched 5 or 6 YouTube videos on it, I figured, why not... according to users (which I believe now that I've done it), applying screen protectors via wet method makes dust bubbles difficult to come by, and it is actually easier. Thanks to the few drops of soap in the water, you have enough flexibility to move the protector around on the screen until you get it where you need it, then do the credit card thing to squeeze out the slightly soapy water (don't forget to have paper towels handy at the edges to catch the fluid). Overall, decent method. I have a real Nexus 7 protector coming from Amazon in the next week or two... I just did the custom cut iPad thing so I had a temporary/cheap protector until that time comes. I'm sure in due time we'll see more accessories in B&M stores nearby.
Summary - FINALLY, a tablet that is priced with some degree of logic. Even when you take the cons into consideration, this is easily the best tablet I've used. Might I throw a reminder on the table, I have 3 other tablets (iPad, Galaxy Tab, Nook Color) on my desk right now... there's no contest. Sure, some of this may be somewhat unfair because the Nexus 7 came out days ago, whereas the other devices have been here for some time, but I'm still calling it as I see it.
Side note - I still can't believe I'm actually using a tablet... I never thought this would happen. Don't get me wrong, under absolutely no circumstances is my laptop going anywhere, but this thing sure is snazzy.
