The hardware
From the moment you cradle it in your hand, it's clear that the Nexus 7 has evolved into an altogether more classy, high-end device. Where the original model felt stout and well-built, its combination of silver and dark grey plastics never really set the heart racing. Fast forward to the Nexus 7 we have here in 2013, and it's a different story: at 290g, the new Nexus 7 is 50g lighter than its predecessor, and its trimmed-down, 8.65mm thick body has lost a couple of millimetres around its waist, too.
All credit to Asus, though, the newly nipped-and-tucked Nexus 7 still feels beautifully sturdy and well-put together. The soft-touch black plastics look understated but feel silky smooth, and there's not a hint of give or creakiness anywhere to be found. And with Corning's toughened glass covering the new high-definition 1,920 x 1,200 display, this little tablet is set to survive (almost) everything you can throw at it.
The display
The undisputed star of the show is that new display — it's a stunner. With such a high resolution squeezed into a 7in display (according to Google, it's actually 7.02in), the clarity is every bit as impressive as Apple's Retina displays — in fact, the Nexus 7's 323ppi pixel density actually bests Apple's 264ppi.
The results are clear to behold. Text is oustandingly crisp and clear, and colour accuracy, contrast and brightness all look just as good as we'd expect from a top-end tablet. Whether all those pixels play havoc with battery life, though, we'll have to wait and see.
Everything else
The Nexus 7 has a few more additions up its jet-black sleeve, too. With Nvidia's Tegra 3 making way for a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro running at 1.5GHz, Google claims a big power increase on previous models — 80% to be precise. In our time with the Nexus 7, it certainly felt snappier than its predecessor. Despite pushing 44% more on-screen pixels, the new CPU sliced through Android 4.3 with silky smoothness, and flitting between homepages, menus and web browsing was deliciously fluid.
To put the Nexus 7's new-found power to the test, we ran the SunSpider 1.0 browser benchmark — impressively, its score of 1,116ms would have been fast enough to comprehensively beat every tablet in our recent compact tablet group test. By comparison, the original Nexus 7 took 1,683ms to complete the benchmark, while the fastest of the lot, Archos' 80 Titanium, took 1,438ms.
And where the previous model made do with a 1.2MP front-facing camera, Google has now added a 5MP snapper to the rear. There's still dual-band 802.11n, NFC and Bluetooth on offer, but we're pleased to see that 4G has made the grade.
What's missing? A microSD slot. Of course, Google probably wouldn't sell any 32GB units at all if there were one, but although it's a minor moan, expandable storage would have been very welcome.
The best compact yet?
There is one major sticking point with the new Nexus 7: the price. The screen and hardware is lovely, but we do wonder whether the pricing is a little high. Come 28 August, the 16GB model will retail at £200 and the 32GB model will set you back £240. That's a hefty price hike over the previous model, and with the likes of Barnes and Noble's Nook HD and Nook HD+ tumbling to £99 and £149 respectively in the current fire sale, £200 begins to look pretty steep.
Will the performance and display quality make it worth the premium price? We'll just have to wait and see. Keep an eye on the PC Pro website for a full, in-depth review.
No comments:
Post a Comment