I never thought of owning a tablet. Ever since my first smartphone (an HTC Nexus One), until my latest smartphone (a Samsung Galaxy Nexus), my media consumption and communication needs have been met. For more power and processor intensive activities like games or content creation, my desktop and laptop have done the job. This now brings me to the Nexus 7.
I was enticed into buying the Nexus 7 mainly by the price – at $250 or roughly PhP 10,000 after conversion, with an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and a beefy 4,325 mAh battery to boot, who wouldn’t want to buy this? Aside from the price, I was also considering a portable entertainment device because lugging around a laptop just to watch YouTube or surf on the net is not pleasurable.
After nearly 3 weeks of waiting, my order for the Nexus 7 finally arrived. Here’s my initial review after 3 days of playing with it.
Note: I bought this device for more than the PhP 10,000 estimate and I’m running stock Android 4.1.1.
Exterior
There’s a lot of unboxing videos so I won’t bore you with another one. If one word was used to summarize my whole Nexus 7 unboxing experience, it would be HELL! The cardboard exterior packaging felt vacuum sealed, while the adhesives for the box itself were difficult to cut.
The exterior is sleek; with the aluminium looking plastic bezel surrounding the sides of the screen helping to give it a thinner profile than you would actually think. The nice rubbery feel of the back helps in gripping the tablet using one hand.
One minor gripe about the exterior would be the button placement. The volume rocker and the power button are on the upper right side of the tablet wherein they are angled to follow the back contour of the Nexus 7. Pressing on the power and volume buttons took some getting used to, but with the same rubbery coating as the back, it became easier to find it by feel over time.
Screen
My 16GB Nexus 7 has the screen lifting issue wherein the left side of the screen is not flushed into the case of the tablet. It takes an eye doctor to notice it and since it hasn’t gotten any worse, I don’t think I would be going to my local ASUS service centre anytime soon.
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| The screen lift issue (fixed by lightly unscrewing the back screws) |
The screen looks amazing although in comparison to an AMOLED screen like on the Galaxy Nexus, the IPS screen’s colours looks washed out – but that’s just me. If you haven’t seen any other tablet with an LCD IPS screen, you will love the display.
I have been experiencing the screen flickering issue that the folks over at xda developers have been talking about. It really pops out with white backgrounds such as while using Google Chrome. I don’t find it troublesome enough that it hurts my eyes or causes headaches, but it is noticeable.
Software
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| Le Homescreen |
I already had Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean on my Galaxy Nexus, so I wasn’t expecting any less in terms of UI usage and performance from the Nexus 7. If there was a healthy kind of butter, it would be Google’s “Project Butter”. Back in Android 2.3+ Gingerbread, animation hiccups and occasional slowdowns became a constant irritant to my daily existence.
On the Nexus 7, I haven’t experienced any hiccups during swiping or while in menus. Some slowdowns occur while multitasking though, but I find that it boiled down to the non-optimized apps themselves. When I was using Google Apps (YouTube, Google+, Calendar, Gmail), there was no issues with rendering images and videos whatsoever.
Media Consumption
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| Smoke in an Android game? Imposiburu! (Game: Dead Trigger) |
Google anointed the Nexus 7 as a media consumption device, and this tablet does very well in that regard. The IPS display helps to make out text in a magazine or comic book page without having to pinch to zoom every time. Watching videos presents clear sound and visuals better looking than my desktop’s even if YouTube is my only option for now. Surfing the net using Google Chrome is also zippy with desktop-site quality rendering speeds from my experience.
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| Reading comics never looked this good (credit for comics: Y: The Last Man) |
Gaming on the device is a wonderful experience with its Tegra 3 Processor making it capable of rendering smoke, water, and snow effects on Dead Trigger compared to the Galaxy Nexus which had minimal effects for the same game.
Battery Life
Throughout my less than a week of usage, the Nexus 7 lasted at most 2 days on a single charge. The activities involved included surfing, Wi-Fi on the whole time, reading books and comics, watching one to two short videos, and some gaming. Results will vary of course!
Charging the battery took around 3-4 hours from below 10% to 100%.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ponying up more than the SRP of Google for this tablet has been well worth it. Despite the hardware and software issues, which are fixable with a DIY fix and software patch respectively, my general experience with the Nexus 7 has been excellent. Good thing I didn’t buy a PSP or 3DS before this one. Now, I just have to save up enough money to buy more content!
Notes before buying
• ASUS Philippines will be bringing in the tablet by the end of August according to Yugatech so if you are still on the fence because of the product quality issues, wait for September before buying.
• This is not meant to replace any media creation device you have now (laptop, desktop) because this is meant as a media consumption device.
• The $25 Google Play store credit and the free movie cannot be availed in the Philippines.
• The Google Play Store is locked down outside the US (I’m using the Kindle app to read books, Zinio for magazines, Comixology for the comics, my iTunes files and DoubleTwist for podcasts and music)
• I bought this tablet significantly higher than the SRP of Google so you are really better off if you wait until September to see the local price.
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