This review is from: Google Nexus 7 Tablet PC (Android 4.1 Jellybean) – 16 GB
Reviewers are all correct to say this tablet is cheaper elsewhere. You have to remember that Google’s Nexus is a direct competitor with Amazon’s own Kindle Fire HD, so it is not surprising that Amazon will not price it competitively or favourably with the Kindle Fire. Actually full marks to them for stocking a competitor’s product at all!
There are loads of online reviews that lead me to purchase the Nexus 7 in preference to other options so I will not dwell on comparisons with other products. My experience out of the box was of a high quality bit of kit. The dimpled non-slip back with the NEXUS logo keeps the device from slipping if you use the device on a tabletop, or your lap and looks classy. The touch screen is beautifuly smooth and responsive , and whilst the screen is not a Retina display as in an Apple product, it is HD, vibrant and sharp, and lends plenty of depth to the visual experience. In fact I never thought I would watch a full length feature film on a device this size, but it come loaded with Transformers 3 Dark Side of the Moon, which ran flawlessly, and listening through my AKG450 headphones it was an immersive cinematic experience – I was very impressed.
The sound quality when played through the internal device speakers is okay but hardly stellar. If you are serious about your music, you will have invested in a decent pair of cans or earbuds to improve your experience. No headphones are included. My headphones are good mid-range ones, and the audio reproduction is very good, improved by using either the device’s own graphic equaliser or downloading one from the “Play Store”. I downloaded EQualiser for free which has several presets as well as 5 sliders to set your own custom levels. I did notice with my older Sennheiser earbuds that the volume output seemed quite restricted and certainly some headphones that require more power to drive them will benefit from an in-line headphone amplifier. I use a FiiO EO5 mini headphone amp, purchased through Amazon for about £15, which I have reviewed separately. The AKG phones are sensitive and don’t really need the amp, but I swear it still sounds better with the amp connected.
I mostly download my music from Amazon MP3 store and have also played from the Amazon Cloud, this works well, I just had to remember to go into the settings to manually refresh the cloud to see my latest purchases. I guess that is what I find attractive about the Nexus and the Android Operating System, I am not tied to one Media retailer, and my music will play from the standard windows media files already stored on my PC and ripped from my CD collection without any time consuming conversion. I can just connect the Nexus to my Laptop/PC with the included USB to Micro USB cable and drag and drop my music (or pictures or any other data) to the Nexus or vice-versa.
A plus point is access to many thousands of Android Apps, many of which have been developed by 3rd party developers. OK so many apps are configured to run on smaller screened smartphones, and are merely upscaled – but that happened with the i-pad initially too. I suspect that the Nexus being such a volume selling platform, it will be a target for masses more optimised Apps in the near future.
Something to bear in mind if reading US reviews of the Nexus 7 is that although Google Play offers a good number of book titles, it does not currently offer magazines in the UK. Similarly “Google Now” which learns from your habits such as travel and web-browsing to think ahead and provide you with traffic updates etc does not currently work well in the UK although it promises to be an interesting development if supported properly here. As a dedicated e-reader I think that the original Kindle is actually very hard to beat, but reading the included Jeffery Archer tome on the Nexus was very comfortable . Google play does offer a ggod range of Classics Novels for free. Interestingly I never did get the promised £15 credit on the Play Store – not sure why.
One gripe. Sometimes I have to hold the power button in for up to 20 seconds before the device turns on. Other times the response is almost instantaneous, most of the time it takes a press of between 3 and 8 seconds before the power comes on. It seems this is fairly normal, and is not too much of a worry, but some consistency would be good.
The wi-fi only nature of the device is not quite as limiting as you might expect with so many free wi-fi spots around now. As a BT Internet customer I have an App to connect to any BT Hotspot for free which is great. Alternatively I can use my Smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot when it has a good 3G signal and I have used the Nexus to connect to it which pretty much as good as having built in 3G.
Battery power is great. I have used the device for music and movie playback and web browsing for 5 hours solid and the icon showed half the power remaining. Full…
This review is from: Google Nexus 7 Tablet PC (Android 4.1 Jellybean) – 16 GB
I have been using the Nexus 7 for about 10 days now and have found it a very positive experience. I also own an iPad 2 which is a good tablet but I have always regarded the iPad as a device for home use only. I wouldn’t consider for one moment putting it in a bag and lugging it around with me – it’s too big and too heavy. Also I am not exactly a fan of Apple’s restrictive practices when it comes to selling media and it is unlikely that I will buy any more Apple tablets. I much prefer Android. In any case for real portability you need a 7in tablet and in my view the Nexus 7 is arguably the best around at the moment.
I won’t go over ground covered in other reviews, other than to say that the Nexus 7 was simple to set up; connecting to Wi-Fi was instantaneous and I have had no problems with my Wi-Fi signal wherever I happen to be in my house. The Nexus 7 has been reliable and it has performed flawlessly. Jellybean has proved to be a fast, responsive and slick operating system. Screen resolution is excellent. Battery life has been OK. I get at least a day from it and often two, but obviously it depends on how much time you spend using the tablet and what you are doing.
Currys are currently selling the 32gb version of this tablet for £199 (which is where I bought it). It comes with a £20 cashback deal via the Asus website if you buy a case at the same time. Currys misinformed me about this, telling me that the cashback applied to the tablet on its own and that it was not necessary to buy the case as well – so I didn’t. In fact you do have to buy the case and both transactions have to appear on the same sales slip. However, before opting for that I would suggest checking Curry’s cases and only buying a case if it comes with a built in magnetic strip with the sleep and awake function. The reason for this is that the on/off button in the Nexus 7 is positioned on the side towards the back of the tablet and it is difficult and fiddly to access once the tablet is in a case – it doesn’t matter which case; if the tablet is held as securely as it should be the on/off button will be hard to access. One case I can definitely recommend is the one from Mofred which Amazon sell for under £10. It is stylish and expensive looking (much more so than Amazon’s photo would suggest), well-designed, holds the Nexus 7 very securely and comes with a magnetic strip. The sleep/awake feature works every time. It comes in a wide variety of colours including black. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Function-Standby-feature-Protector-Available/dp/B008GM3SAI/ref=sr_1_46?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1353326100&sr=1-46
There are obviously loads of apps you can download but for video and music playback I can recommend the following:
Video: mVideoPlayer (Old) or MX Player. If your videos are organised into folders both apps will recognise these. MX Player has a slightly plainer user interface but the quality of video playback seems better (a subjective judgment of course). Get the older version of mVideoPlayer – the newer one seems to have some teething problems. The Nexus 7’s built in video player offers separate tabs for Movies and Personal Videos but will only present your content in a single flat file with all videos listed in alphabetical order.
Music: MixZing Basic. This app will allow you to view your music by Artist, Album, Songs, Genres and Playlists. I use playlists a lot- this app allows you to add items to a playlist and then change the order of those items within the playlist as you please. All of these apps are free. The built in music player incidently will recognise any playlists set up in MixZing (but does not allow you to create them as far as I know) and actually has a more attractive interface.
TV: BBC iPlayer is available along with BBC Media Player (but no other catchup services). TV catchup – this free app gives you live TV across the whole Freeview platform with something like a 45 sec lag behind broadcast TV). It works very well which it did not do in early versions of Android OS.
Audio quality on the Nexus 7 is very good provided you use a half decent pair of headphones or earbuds. The Nexus 7’s speaker is awful and best disregarded.
I haven’t really used the stylus so can’t comment except that I did not find it particularly helpful as an aid to keying in data – it seemed no better than my fingers.
As a Google Chrome user the only real problem I have had is in syncing my bookmarks to the Nexus 7. Try as I might I have not been able to get them to sync in the normal way (my iPad seems to do it with no problem at all). This is not an uncommon problem apparently. The only solution I have found was to download a free app called CMarksLite. This syncs my bookmarks and you can access the bookmarks and go to bookmarked pages via the app. I actually thought this failure was quite poor considering that the Nexus 7 is…
This review is from: Google Nexus 7 Tablet PC (Android 4.1 Jellybean) – 16 GB
Got this tablet for birthday and it is just amazing.
Screen is very sharp, good colours, auto brightness works very well. I watched Transformers on it in HD and the video was so sharp. 7 inches is perfect for reading books, viewing photos, movies on the go, facebook, email and casual games. It can be easily held in one hand which is a great thing. For more serious movie watching 10inch would be better but for taking it to train to watch some movies on way to work/home 7inch is perfect. It is better on the go because of smaller size and weight.
Touch. Very responsive, records touches instantly, it is not the laggy Android 2.2 or 2.3 that I seen before. The touch experience is iPad 3 class.
Performance. This is most smooth Android experience I have seen, really the Android 4.1 goes in par with iPhone/iPad now. Apps work very fast, games too. Just N.O.V.A 3 is not so fast, I thought it will work better. Multitasking works well, apps sit in background and can be switched easily.
Play store. There are numbers of apps and increasing collection of movies to rent, also an impressing collection of books to buy.
In any aspect Nexus 7 is a really great tablet. Currently it has better operating system than iPad – it has widgets, live wallpapers, interactive notification bar, adaptable application layouts. Just the price at Amazon I high, you can buy I for 199£ elsewhere.
UPDATE OK so I lost it. My wife has taken it over from me ultimately, and she says she loves it and cannot live without it anymore 😀 Have to look for another one.
UPDATE Still very happy with it, there are new really good looking games that came out recently, like Wild Blood on Unreal engine or Need For Speed Most Wanted.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Probably The Best Tablet On The Market – But It Is Cheaper Elsewhere,
Reviewers are all correct to say this tablet is cheaper elsewhere. You have to remember that Google’s Nexus is a direct competitor with Amazon’s own Kindle Fire HD, so it is not surprising that Amazon will not price it competitively or favourably with the Kindle Fire. Actually full marks to them for stocking a competitor’s product at all!
There are loads of online reviews that lead me to purchase the Nexus 7 in preference to other options so I will not dwell on comparisons with other products.
My experience out of the box was of a high quality bit of kit. The dimpled non-slip back with the NEXUS logo keeps the device from slipping if you use the device on a tabletop, or your lap and looks classy. The touch screen is beautifuly smooth and responsive , and whilst the screen is not a Retina display as in an Apple product, it is HD, vibrant and sharp, and lends plenty of depth to the visual experience. In fact I never thought I would watch a full length feature film on a device this size, but it come loaded with Transformers 3 Dark Side of the Moon, which ran flawlessly, and listening through my AKG450 headphones it was an immersive cinematic experience – I was very impressed.
The sound quality when played through the internal device speakers is okay but hardly stellar. If you are serious about your music, you will have invested in a decent pair of cans or earbuds to improve your experience. No headphones are included. My headphones are good mid-range ones, and the audio reproduction is very good, improved by using either the device’s own graphic equaliser or downloading one from the “Play Store”. I downloaded EQualiser for free which has several presets as well as 5 sliders to set your own custom levels. I did notice with my older Sennheiser earbuds that the volume output seemed quite restricted and certainly some headphones that require more power to drive them will benefit from an in-line headphone amplifier. I use a FiiO EO5 mini headphone amp, purchased through Amazon for about £15, which I have reviewed separately. The AKG phones are sensitive and don’t really need the amp, but I swear it still sounds better with the amp connected.
I mostly download my music from Amazon MP3 store and have also played from the Amazon Cloud, this works well, I just had to remember to go into the settings to manually refresh the cloud to see my latest purchases. I guess that is what I find attractive about the Nexus and the Android Operating System, I am not tied to one Media retailer, and my music will play from the standard windows media files already stored on my PC and ripped from my CD collection without any time consuming conversion. I can just connect the Nexus to my Laptop/PC with the included USB to Micro USB cable and drag and drop my music (or pictures or any other data) to the Nexus or vice-versa.
A plus point is access to many thousands of Android Apps, many of which have been developed by 3rd party developers. OK so many apps are configured to run on smaller screened smartphones, and are merely upscaled – but that happened with the i-pad initially too. I suspect that the Nexus being such a volume selling platform, it will be a target for masses more optimised Apps in the near future.
Something to bear in mind if reading US reviews of the Nexus 7 is that although Google Play offers a good number of book titles, it does not currently offer magazines in the UK. Similarly “Google Now” which learns from your habits such as travel and web-browsing to think ahead and provide you with traffic updates etc does not currently work well in the UK although it promises to be an interesting development if supported properly here. As a dedicated e-reader I think that the original Kindle is actually very hard to beat, but reading the included Jeffery Archer tome on the Nexus was very comfortable . Google play does offer a ggod range of Classics Novels for free. Interestingly I never did get the promised £15 credit on the Play Store – not sure why.
One gripe. Sometimes I have to hold the power button in for up to 20 seconds before the device turns on. Other times the response is almost instantaneous, most of the time it takes a press of between 3 and 8 seconds before the power comes on. It seems this is fairly normal, and is not too much of a worry, but some consistency would be good.
The wi-fi only nature of the device is not quite as limiting as you might expect with so many free wi-fi spots around now. As a BT Internet customer I have an App to connect to any BT Hotspot for free which is great. Alternatively I can use my Smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot when it has a good 3G signal and I have used the Nexus to connect to it which pretty much as good as having built in 3G.
Battery power is great. I have used the device for music and movie playback and web browsing for 5 hours solid and the icon showed half the power remaining. Full…
Read more
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|Great value tablet,
I have been using the Nexus 7 for about 10 days now and have found it a very positive experience. I also own an iPad 2 which is a good tablet but I have always regarded the iPad as a device for home use only. I wouldn’t consider for one moment putting it in a bag and lugging it around with me – it’s too big and too heavy. Also I am not exactly a fan of Apple’s restrictive practices when it comes to selling media and it is unlikely that I will buy any more Apple tablets. I much prefer Android. In any case for real portability you need a 7in tablet and in my view the Nexus 7 is arguably the best around at the moment.
I won’t go over ground covered in other reviews, other than to say that the Nexus 7 was simple to set up; connecting to Wi-Fi was instantaneous and I have had no problems with my Wi-Fi signal wherever I happen to be in my house. The Nexus 7 has been reliable and it has performed flawlessly. Jellybean has proved to be a fast, responsive and slick operating system. Screen resolution is excellent. Battery life has been OK. I get at least a day from it and often two, but obviously it depends on how much time you spend using the tablet and what you are doing.
Currys are currently selling the 32gb version of this tablet for £199 (which is where I bought it). It comes with a £20 cashback deal via the Asus website if you buy a case at the same time. Currys misinformed me about this, telling me that the cashback applied to the tablet on its own and that it was not necessary to buy the case as well – so I didn’t. In fact you do have to buy the case and both transactions have to appear on the same sales slip. However, before opting for that I would suggest checking Curry’s cases and only buying a case if it comes with a built in magnetic strip with the sleep and awake function. The reason for this is that the on/off button in the Nexus 7 is positioned on the side towards the back of the tablet and it is difficult and fiddly to access once the tablet is in a case – it doesn’t matter which case; if the tablet is held as securely as it should be the on/off button will be hard to access. One case I can definitely recommend is the one from Mofred which Amazon sell for under £10. It is stylish and expensive looking (much more so than Amazon’s photo would suggest), well-designed, holds the Nexus 7 very securely and comes with a magnetic strip. The sleep/awake feature works every time. It comes in a wide variety of colours including black. Here’s the link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Function-Standby-feature-Protector-Available/dp/B008GM3SAI/ref=sr_1_46?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1353326100&sr=1-46
There are obviously loads of apps you can download but for video and music playback I can recommend the following:
Video: mVideoPlayer (Old) or MX Player. If your videos are organised into folders both apps will recognise these. MX Player has a slightly plainer user interface but the quality of video playback seems better (a subjective judgment of course). Get the older version of mVideoPlayer – the newer one seems to have some teething problems. The Nexus 7’s built in video player offers separate tabs for Movies and Personal Videos but will only present your content in a single flat file with all videos listed in alphabetical order.
Music: MixZing Basic. This app will allow you to view your music by Artist, Album, Songs, Genres and Playlists. I use playlists a lot- this app allows you to add items to a playlist and then change the order of those items within the playlist as you please. All of these apps are free. The built in music player incidently will recognise any playlists set up in MixZing (but does not allow you to create them as far as I know) and actually has a more attractive interface.
TV: BBC iPlayer is available along with BBC Media Player (but no other catchup services). TV catchup – this free app gives you live TV across the whole Freeview platform with something like a 45 sec lag behind broadcast TV). It works very well which it did not do in early versions of Android OS.
Audio quality on the Nexus 7 is very good provided you use a half decent pair of headphones or earbuds. The Nexus 7’s speaker is awful and best disregarded.
I haven’t really used the stylus so can’t comment except that I did not find it particularly helpful as an aid to keying in data – it seemed no better than my fingers.
As a Google Chrome user the only real problem I have had is in syncing my bookmarks to the Nexus 7. Try as I might I have not been able to get them to sync in the normal way (my iPad seems to do it with no problem at all). This is not an uncommon problem apparently. The only solution I have found was to download a free app called CMarksLite. This syncs my bookmarks and you can access the bookmarks and go to bookmarked pages via the app. I actually thought this failure was quite poor considering that the Nexus 7 is…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|The best 7” tablet,
Got this tablet for birthday and it is just amazing.
Screen is very sharp, good colours, auto brightness works very well. I watched Transformers on it in HD and the video was so sharp. 7 inches is perfect for reading books, viewing photos, movies on the go, facebook, email and casual games. It can be easily held in one hand which is a great thing. For more serious movie watching 10inch would be better but for taking it to train to watch some movies on way to work/home 7inch is perfect. It is better on the go because of smaller size and weight.
Touch. Very responsive, records touches instantly, it is not the laggy Android 2.2 or 2.3 that I seen before. The touch experience is iPad 3 class.
Performance. This is most smooth Android experience I have seen, really the Android 4.1 goes in par with iPhone/iPad now. Apps work very fast, games too. Just N.O.V.A 3 is not so fast, I thought it will work better. Multitasking works well, apps sit in background and can be switched easily.
Play store. There are numbers of apps and increasing collection of movies to rent, also an impressing collection of books to buy.
In any aspect Nexus 7 is a really great tablet. Currently it has better operating system than iPad – it has widgets, live wallpapers, interactive notification bar, adaptable application layouts. Just the price at Amazon I high, you can buy I for 199£ elsewhere.
UPDATE
OK so I lost it. My wife has taken it over from me ultimately, and she says she loves it and cannot live without it anymore 😀 Have to look for another one.
UPDATE
Still very happy with it, there are new really good looking games that came out recently, like Wild Blood on Unreal engine or Need For Speed Most Wanted.
Was this review helpful to you?
|