The Nexus 7 (2013) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 22, 2013 6:00 PM ESTWiFi, GPS
I won't spend too much time on either of these points as Brian already did so in his initial review. WiFi duties are handled by Qualcomm's WCN3660 WiFi combo chip. The new Nexus 7 sees an update to include 5GHz 802.11n support, which is a very welcome addition. There's no 802.11ac, understandably for cost reasons. 802.11ac is probably the only thing missing from this otherwise awesome platform.
When it comes to GPS, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Qualcomm's GNSS implementation remains the fastest we've tested as far as time to lock is concerned. The bad news is there seems to be an issue with the Nexus 7's impementation, likely in software, that results in the tablet randomly losing GPS lock. Update: It looks like this has been fixed!
Note that neither my Nexus 7 nor Brian's have exhibited the instability or consistent reboots that I've seen reports of. I had a single unexpected reboot during my GPS testing but that was it. Brian's sample has been running with over 22 days of constant uptime at this point. I also haven't seen any multitouch issues on my Nexus 7, although touch controllers are sometimes sourced from multiple vendors which could explain some of the issues others are seeing. Update: Looks like this one is fixed too!
Camera
The new Nexus 7 adds a 5MP rear facing camera, something its predecessor didn't have at all. While I rarely use my tablet for taking photos, I will admit the absence of a rear facing camera on the old Nexus 7 caught me off guard. Image quality out of the rear camera is decent. I threw together a gallery comparing the Nexus 7's rear camera to the iPad mini, MeMO Pad HD7 and Galaxy Tab 3 8.0:
In well lit situations and if you're sharing photos at lower resolutions, the Nexus 7's camera isn't bad at all. It's not the best thing in the world but in a pinch it's fine. I also threw in iPhone 5 samples as a reference in the gallery above.
Video on the Nexus 7 (2013) is 1080p30 at 12 Mbps, H.264 Baseline with 1 reference frame, and 96 kbps 48 KHz single channel AAC audio.
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scavio - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Seems odd that you compare the display to an iPad 4 and say you won't even bother comparing it to other android tablets. As far as I can tell you don't even include the iPad 4 in any of the graphs except pixel density and do include a bunch of android tablets.andykins - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
I noticed that too. You should include the retina ipad display in the graphs imo. Also redefines has been misspelt on the final paragraph of final words.Good article. Tempting :)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Fixed :)scavio - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Thanks! The numbers really are close, I'm impressed.jiffylube1024 - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Some of the tests (eg 3d mark) don't run on iOS, which explains the ipad 4's absence.mmarafie - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
The comparison to the iPad 4 is a way to detract from the real competitor to Nexus 7, the iPad mini. Not only does the Nexus 7 offer much better color accuracy than the iPad mini, it also has double the pixel density at 323 compared to 163...Anand calls the SOC in the N7 "performance mainstream" which has a Quad Core Krait @ 1.5GHz and 2GB RAM. Yet he omits to mention the paltry (2 year old) SOC in the iPad mini a Cortex A8 based Dual Core CPU running 1GHz with 512MB RAM and a GPU that is less than half the power of the Adreno 320 in the N7...mmarafie - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Yes in general, apps are still slightly better optimized on iOS, but Android apps are closing in fast not only in quantity but also in quality. So a properly optimized app on N7 can easily get 2 to 4x CPU/GPU power compared to iPad mini. Also Anand omits mentioning the price deference between the N7 at only $240 compared with the iPad mini at $340. I understand the better build quality on the iPad, but paying $100 more for the comparatively pixelated screen and weak hardware of the iPad mini is just plain ridiculous...For the 32GB 4G version it gets even worse, the N7 costs only $350, while the iPad mini costs $660! Is this a joke or what? Again Anand omits to mention any of that...mmarafie - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Sorry, meant to say $560 for the 32GB 4G version of the iPad minidyc4ha - Thursday, August 22, 2013 - link
Well, the fact that it is being compared to Apple's flagship tablet says mighty much already... I do not see the need to compare it directly with the Mini because, well, there isn't a comparison. I enjoyed the review btw, keep it up!mmarafie - Friday, August 23, 2013 - link
If someone is in the market for a smaller tablet say in the 7 to 8" size range, then they would be looking at say the Nexus 7, iPad mini, Galaxy Tab 3 and Note 8.0, Asus MeMo Pad etc. So these are the tablets that should be compared directly with each other in review. Although it's still a good idea to have benchmarks of the larger tablets for comparison too.To me the review is incomplete and omitting some variables that could help the buyer make an informed decision.