Google's Nexus 7 ($199 for 8GB, $249 for 16GB) is a game-changer. The first tablet with Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," it's the most bang for the buck you can get in the market right now. It's versatile, well-built, fast, and a lot of fun to use. It basically renders every 7-inch tablet priced at more than $300 pretty much irrelevant. If you're looking for a small tablet to surf the Internet and play games, this is the one to buy. It easily unseats the Amazon Kindle Fire ($199, 4 stars) as our Editors' Choice for small tablets.
Physical Features and InternetThe Nexus 7 feels well-built, even classy for a $200 tablet—and trust me, I've handled plenty of cheap tablets. Kudos go to the hardware manufacturer, Asus, a company that typically builds good stuff. A Gorilla Glass screen dominates the front of the tablet, and around back, there's a slightly grippy, stippled black rubber panel. At 7.8 by 4.7 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and 12 ounces, it's comfortable to hold in one hand for long periods.
Turn the tablet on using the prominent Power button at the top right corner, and you'll see a perfectly fine 1280-by-800, 7-inch IPS LCD with a huge black bezel around it. The screen is higher-res than the Kindle Fire, which clocks in at 1280-by-600. This is one monster of a bezel, and it makes you wonder if the screen could have been larger, or the tablet smaller. The answer is "probably not for $200."
The display is bright enough to see indoors and out, on par with the Kindle Fire's, although it's more reflective and less saturated than the high-end AMOLED screens used by the far more expensive tablets like the Toshiba Excite 7.7 ($499.99, 3.5 stars) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 ($699.99, 3.5 stars).
A Wi-Fi-only device, the Nexus 7 connects to the Internet using 802.11 b/g/n, albeit only on the 2.4GHz band.The tablet supports Bluetooth for audio and NFC to transfer files to other NFC-equipped Android devices. Interestingly, Google Wallet doesn't appear in Google Play on the Nexus 7, so, for now, at least, it doesn't look like you can make NFC credit-card payments here.
Performance and AppsThe quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset inside is one of the fastest mobile processors around. This unit runs at 1.3GHz in single core mode, and 1.2GHz when two to four cores are active. It's far faster than the Kindle Fire's older dual-core chipset. While our Antutu system benchmark won't run on the new version of Android, we ran a bunch of other benchmarks, including Geekbench and Quadrant for system scores, Browsermark and Sunspider for the Web, and Nenamark for graphics.
System-wise, the Nexus 7 performed on par with other recent Tegra 3 tablets like the Toshiba Excite 7.7. Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark, and the Tegra 3 tablets score considerably higher on it than the dual-core Apple iPad does—in this case, 1,472 to the iPad's 761. Graphics performance was rock-solid with a 55.9 fps rating in Nenamark, higher than the Excite 7.7 and the Asus Transformer Pad TF300 ($379, 4 stars).
Games just rock here. Both Zen Pinball and Riptide GP had the smooth ease of control which marks a really good gaming experience. There was no jerkiness, no lag, and no compromises. The Kindle Fire has games, but they aren't as glamorous as the Tegra Zone entries.
This is the first Google device to install Chrome as the default browser, and that's great; it's about 30 percent faster than the older stock Android browser, and it has a better tab interface.
The performance news gets even better with Android 4.1 thanks to "Butter." That's Google's code-name for a project that makes everything in the Android UI smoother, and it works. Screen transitions are indeed smoother, and there's no lag with the touch keyboard. The whole experience feels more polished and professional than previous Android iterations.
Butter doesn't solve everything, though. Android has problems with processing stylus touch inputs that can make it difficult to use drawing programs. Android 4.1 apparently fixes this, but consumers won't see the advantage yet because the apps involved need to be retooled for the new OS.
Thus we get to the stickiest issue with Android tablets: The perpetual lack of great apps designed to use high-end hardware. This is less of a problem with Tegra-powered 7-inch tablets than with larger tablets, or those with different chipsets, but it's still an issue. Apps designed for 4-inch phone screens don't look so bad on 7-inch tablets (although they don't look great), and Nvidia has been busily helping developers churn out a few dozen super-high-end games for its chips.
You're going to find the range of apps designed for Android tablets to be in the single-digit thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands you'll find on the iPad. But the success of this tablet might improve that, and you certainly have some decent apps to start working with. The list on the Tablified Market ($1.49, 4 stars) is an excellent starting point.
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