Kindle Fire, iPad, Nook…the list goes on and on. Let me introduce to you yet another tablet! I’m thrilled to bring you the Google Nexus 7 Tablet review. I just love it and I want to share with you how cool this tech gadget really is! It surely simplifies and brings organization to my life – especially when I’m away from home.
Onto the Google Nexus 7 Tablet Review
Nexus 7 Features
The Nexus 7 has so many features that make this tablet a pleasure to use. The Nexus 7 tablet is a Google product built by Asus. It’s an Android based tablet that is powered by the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS (operating system), which is the latest mobile platform and is noted for its stability. The processor is a NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L Processor. The system supports Adobe flash. This is important as many programs, games and websites use flash. The screen has a 16:9 (1280px-by-800px) high-resolution display, with the screen being of a scratch resistant Corning glass and anti-fingerprint technology. Video playback is in HD. The speakers are Hi-Definition Audio CODEC. The Nexus 7 is compact in size. It’s a mere 7.81″ long, 4.7″ wide, and .41″ thick. The back casing is textured and this makes it for easy holding. The compact size also makes it easy to hold and the fact that it weighs a mere 12 oz., makes it easy on the wrists too. I find the size/weight of the tablet to be great features for the mere fact that I usually take the device to bed with me at night to play games or scroll through my Facebook wall while lying on my back. The Nexus 7 comes with a quad-core processor, as it is designed for gaming. If you have no idea what quad core means – it means it’s fast. And the Nexus 7 is fast. Apps download in NO time. Downloading .pdf files – are a snap. Web pages load fast and the Google Chrome browser is built in. Games load fast once downloaded and I have not any trouble with them freezing up. Updating the system is a breeze. The Nexus 7 tablet is Bluetooth v2.1 compatible.
As you can see, the screen is vibrant – it’s even more vibrant in person.
I love, love, love the Speak Now feature. Ninety-nine point nine percent (99.9%) of the time, what I have spoken is clearly translated by the tablet. In the picture below – do you see that little flower like icon to the right of Facebook.com? To activate the Speak Now feature, simply tap that icon. A little box will pop up telling you to Speak Now. Speak Now then does its thing and brings you to what you were looking for. One can even use this feature to speak a web address in the address bar of Chrome. I think this is probably my most favorite feature of the Nexus for the mere fact – I hate hen pecking! And, of course, my hands aren’t big enough to use the keyboard in the Qwerty board position as I would my cell – a double whammy for me!
The Nexus 7 is designed for Google Play
Google Play is Google’s Android store. I think you’ll find that given the extensive list of songs, TV shows, magazines, and movies (over 600,000), that you’ll find that you’ll be in good hands. And, yes, one can still use their iTunes music with Google Play…if that is a concern. All one needs to do is import their iTunes music library, (up to 20,000 songs, and cannot include DRM protected songs), using Music Manager.
The Nexus 7 Designed for Google’s Cloud Drive
Nexus 7 is a tablet and tablets usually don’t have USB expansion slots for the mere fact that they are designed to use a cloud drive. Google Drive is Google’s cloud-based storage and there is plenty of it. Google Drive also holds all the documents that one used to find under Google Documents. This part of the device really excites me because I am ALL about convenience. Google simplified my life on my desktop computer a few years ago. I still continue to find things out about their platform that gives me the convenience I desire, but even more importantly – need. Google Drive syncs between devices – how nice is that? Now that I have the Google Nexus 7, the organization the Google Drive brings me in all aspects of my life, is just what I needed. When I am out and about I can view my Google docs, my calendar, and my email – all at the touch of a button. I can add calendar events. I can add an email address/contact information right in my email. It doesn’t get much more convenient than that. And should I not be near a wi-fi connection – I can still view my inbox to read and search for emails. I can draft a response and be that much farther ahead of the game for when I get connected.
Battery Life
You ask about the battery life. It’s stated that one can view HD video for 9 hours, ereading and web browsing – 10 hours, with a 300 hour stand-by time. It’s really hard for me to tell how long the battery truly lasts, but I don’t believe that it lasts a full 10 hours, maybe 7-8 hours tops. That isn’t a big deal to me, as I’ve learned that I need to plug in anything like this regularly- as in daily! If I don’t, I end up finding that the device has a completely drained battery when I need it the most.
Camera
I would say the one down fall of the Nexus 7 is that it only has a 1.2MP front facing camera. My daughter wasn’t impressed when she couldn’t figure out how to take a picture right off the bat. In researching how to take a pic, as I was baffled as to why there would be a camera but no way to activate it…just didn’t make sense to me. What I learned was one must download the app for the camera. Not a big deal, just a little inconvenient and annoying when you wanna play when you first take the device out of the box. The picture quality obviously isn’t superb, but for what I need the camera for, it works. And when one really thinks about it – if you’re really needing a high quality picture, you’d get out the digital camera. Tablets aren’t designed to replace the quality pictures a digital camera will give you.
Affordability
The Google Nexus 7 is priced right. For $199 you can snag yourself an 8 GB version, or $249 will get you a 16 GB Nexus 7. Mine is a 16 GB and I am glad that is what I chose. Gigabytes fill up fast and I really didn’t want to be thinking about what I needed to delete in order to be able to add more apps. Would I recommend this tablet to someone? I would in a heartbeat. One can purchase the Google Nexus 7 at Staples.com.
*I received the Google Nexus 7 Tablet from our friends at Staples.com in order to facilitate an honest review. Thank you Staples! All opinions are 100% my own.