My Personal Review of the Nexus 7

Posted by jessemawhinney on August 29, 2012 01:44 am 3

I've spent quite a lot of time with my new Nexus 7 by Asus/Google and to get down to it, I'm in love. I am a Mac and iPhone user and favor Apple in most cases but the Nexus 7 and Android Jelly Bean are winning me over (not sure if I'll make the switch to an Android phone just yet though, I'd miss Apple's app store too much!).

The Nexus 7 is a 7 inch tablet compared to the iPad's 10" size. This is a big difference in size and I personally feel like that is a good thing. 7" is perfect for reading books, browsing the web and gaming. Your arm will not get tired. The weight is comparable to a hard cover book.

Speaking of gaming, this baby has Tegra 3 onboard. Games like Dead Trigger look and play great (better than the iPad).

Jelly Bean was the big seller for me on the Nexus 7. It is running the most current version of Android, Jelly Bean 4.1.1, the biggest update to Android ever. It's war on lag, Project Butter, paid off well. It is smooth and responsive as can be. The Google Play store has apps, music, books and magazines which is great because this is ment to to be a media device.

Another big update for Google's Play Store is Google Now. For those that do not know, Google Now is comparable to Apple's Siri. You can ask it questions like "What time is it?" "What movies has Bill Murray played in?" "When will the sun rise?" or fun trick "Do a barrel roll.". It works great and it does use the Google search engine to learn and basically suggest things to you like what the traffic is like on your commute to work or what was the score to the Brewers game.

Now the issues. I've noticed that the screen is really washed out looking at a very high brightness (too bright in my opinion). It is an 720p HD display but compared to the new iPad's Retina Display, there is no competition. The other issue is the fact that the Play Store is lacking apps optimized for Tablets still. The iPad has a lot more support in this area. While using the official twitter app you will really see how much love went into the iPad version while on Android it is still the phone UI fit to the screen

In conclusion for the price the Nexus 7 is a no brainer. Google and Asus Put a lot of love into this tablet and for $200 for the 8GB (or $250 for the 16GB version) there just is no competition in the 7" tablet market (referring to you Kindle Fire and Nook). If you want to get the latest OS updates of Android first and want an excellent tablet expecially for the price then pick one of these babies up now!

Pros:

-Jelly Bean

-Latest updates

-Good size

-Portable powerhouse!

Cons:

-Washed out colors

-Lack of tablet optimized apps