ASUS Google Nexus 7 (2012
16GB Wifi Version) Review
Since
the discovery of tablet, the market has been flooding with tablets,
phablets and all types of xxxblets. Due to the development of smaller micron
processors, portability is not a problem nowadays. In the midst of the competition ASUS Google Nexus 7 is an
upcoming tablet screaming to grab everyone's attention. It retails for around
$179 and $199 for 16gb and 32gb wifi only versions respectively and $230 for
16gb wifi + 3g version. So let's get in to the review arena.
1. Brand Talk:
1. Brand Talk:
This
tablet is manufactured by ASUSTek, a Taiwanese Electronics giant who are known
for the manufacture of laptops, graphics card, cd/dvd/bluray drives, mobiles
and of course tablets. They are known for their high quality products all over
the world. The Nexus 7 is also co-developed by Google, the US based internet
search giant. The Nexus is Google's concept by virtue of which they have equal
involvement with the manufacturer in the development and production of the
tablet. These tablets are for those who
need a stock android experience (" i.e android without any OEM's modification"). They will also be the first devices to get Google's latest Android
updates.
2. Out of the box
The box
looks premium at first sight ("credit goes to ASUS as always").
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| The box |
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| The box with cover opened |
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| Jewel Hidden inside |
The
very first grab of the tablet in your hands makes you feel it is worth the money and your
excited to open it up gently without damaging the box ("hey that’s what I felt").
Once you open the box, you find your beautiful nexus tablet seated a gem. Inside
is a charger with USB port, micro USB data/charger cable, instructions manual
and the warranty card.
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| Fully unboxed, From top left- manual, warranty card, tablet, USB cable, charger |
Asus have kept it simple without adding any extra goodies (" I mean no headphones, what the!"). Overall ASUS has done
a good job; I would certainly have liked the presence of headphones in the box, but considering the low price
tag ASUS couldn’t do the sacrifice.
3. Design and Build
Quality
The
Tablet looks awesome. When you look at it, you wonder whether it's a $250
tablet. It is an all clad black tablet and there are no other colour options. The front is gorgeous, the corning glass gives it a designer look (" frankly I could not keep my eyes away from it").
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| Front View of Tablet |
It has a dimension of 198.5 x
120 x 10.5 mm and weighs 340 g. There is one and the only one 1.2 mp camera
just above the display, adjacent lies the ambient light sensor.
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| The front facing camera and the light sensor |
The glass is
framed by a brushed aluminium plastic which is great. The back also looks
fantastic, with the nexus and ASUS logo. It has a premium rubberized cover
which feels professional.
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| Back View of Tablet |
The speaker is placed at the bottom just below the ASUS
logo.
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| The Speaker |
Unfortunately there is no user replaceable battery in it ("wait a
minute! Is it required for a tablet? Think about it"). Also there is
unfortunately no rear camera for reasons best known only to Google and ASUS
(" are you listening ASUS and Google"). The top side contains only a
mic pinhole.
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| Top Side View of Tablet |
The bottom contains the 3.5mm headphone jack and the micro usb
port which can be used for charging, computer
connections (MTP and PTP) and has USB host enabled for connecting mice and
keyboards. Unfortunately you cannot connect mass storage devices, which would
require you to root the android software to enable.
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| Back View of Tablet |
On the left we find a second mic
pinhole and pogo pins for dock connection.
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| The left view of Tablet |
On the right we have the power button and the volume up down button.
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| Right View of Tablet |
To sum it up, the design is
beautiful and the build quality is robust, I did not find any creaks or
squeaks.
4. Features
ENtering the
middle of the arena, this is a tablet blessed with features. Let's see what it packs
in each department.
a) Screen-
The
screen is one of the main selling points of this tablet. When I first saw
the display, I thought ASUS must have mistakenly put such an expensive type of display in
my tablet. The decision of tablet buyers can be easily biased looking at this
screen. It's a 7 inch 1280x800 WXGA resolution IPS Type LED Backlit LCD Screen
with a pixel density of 216 ppi capable of displaying 16 million colours
("wooh"). It has a contrast ratio of 950, which is a good figure
("apple ipads have a ratio of 920").
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| The beautiful screen |
It is a multitouch display which
can register upto 10 touches simultaneously. The physical aspects of the screen
is that it is glossy, scratch proof and is a Corning Gorilla glass. The screen
has high sharpness, good colour reproduction and the colours are very vibrant. The
viewing angles are great due to the IPS Display, there is negligible colour fading
at different angles. The visibility under sunlight is poor, because the screen
has very low brightness and reflective glossy screen. It is viewable under
normal sunlight, but under heavy sunlight you can hardly see anything. Overall
the screen is great, well done ASUS.
b) Performance-
Nexus 7 is gifted with a Quad Core 1.3 Ghz
Cortex-A9 CPU in Nvidia Tegra 3 Chipset. The graphics is powered by the ULP GeForce
Chip. It has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. There is no expandable microSD slot however. The specifications look good on paper but does it do
justice to its performance? The answer is YES! The tablet is super speed, super
snappy. The touch response is Wow!. Google has done a good job in optimizing
the software to be enjoyed by the beasty hardware. The performance also shows
in standard benchmarks. In Linpack it scored 121.4, In NenaMark 2 which is a
gaming benchmark it scored a whopping 58 fps, IN Benchmark Pi it scored 421
(lower is better). Coming to the browser tests, in Sun Spider it scored 1698
(lower is better) and in Browser Mark it scored 13170.
c) Connectivity, GPS and Sensors-
This
tablet has all the essential connectivity options which you require for the present situation. It has Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC ("wow!). NFC is
available along with Android Beam, this means you can transfer images from two
NFC enabled device just by tapping them. Bluetooth speakers can also be paired
by tapping ("hmm."). The tablet is equipped with A-GPS for
positioning which is very accurate. There is a microUSB port for charging and
file transfer, but no mass storage option. There is 3.5 mm jack for audio
output. In the sensor department it has accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light
sensor and a compass. Overall it has all the important connectivity options
needed for a descent tablet.
d) Software-
This tablet
comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box and will soon be getting the Android 4.4
KitKat update in the coming days. Presently the latest Android installable is the Android 4.3 version
of Jelly Bean.
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| About tab in settings reading Android 4.3 installed |
In the software front you get a stock android experience without any unnecessary apps installed by OEM's . All the standard apps from Google like
Google+, Keep, Hangout, Currents, Google Maps come pre-installed. It has Google
Chrome as its default browser, which according to me is great.
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| The Apps Menu |
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| The Home Screen |
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| The Lock Screen |
e) Battery-
The tablet has a
4325mAH Li-ion non-removable battery. The battery life is commendable. Heavy
tasks like playing games, browsing internet will give you around 2 days of
battery life, which when compared with other tablets around is a great
achievement.
f) Audio, Video Playback and Camera-
For
audio there is a Play Music App, which I found was ok! Nothing great about it.
It has all the standard features of a
music player. It
can play MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA formats. The speakers are very good,
the sound quality is excellent but it would better if it was a little bit loud.
The audio quality of the headphones is
also good with good frequency response. The video playback is through the …….?
("Oh! there is no dedicated video player app"). You can play your videos
from the gallery. It supports MP4/H.264
formats. There is no dedicated camera app to record video or click photos from
the front facing camera. It is only meant for video calling through the Google Messenger. The quality of the 1.2 MP
Camera is good, I can say.
5. Conclusion-
Nexus 7 has changed and
will change the way how consumers will look at Android tablets in the coming
days. This is because it has set a
benchmark sending a strong message that an Android tablet can also have good
touch response and can be super snappy, even though it doesn’t match the touch
experience as that of an Apple Ipad we can say it is not far away from the
Ipad's shore. Price being its main selling point this tablet is selling
like hotcakes. Google have done a splendid job along with ASUS by subsidizing
the price of this tablet which has the specs of tablets costing $100 more than
this one. For this build, screen
quality, processor and battery it is very hard to find any tablet at this
price range. I brought this tablet for Rs.10000 from an online store in India
which is around $160. I am clearly convinced that this is worth the money and
would certainly recommend this tablet.
Please leave your comments below, I would really appreciate it!
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