Nexus 7 First Impressions

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Muthu Ramadoss

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Aug 1, 2012, 9:54:30 PM8/1/12

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Nexus 7 First Impressions

I finally received my Nexus 7 yesterday, after about two weeks of trying to find one - they sold out really quickly here in the UK. I've used it for a little over a day and thought I'd share some first impressions on what it's like to use the tablet in an everyday environment.

For a seven inch, £200 tablet, the Nexus 7 is actually very well built. I say this because there are a lot of £200 tablets out there and most of them are poor. There's no creaking around the panels of the device, and the rubberised 'Steve Mcqueen 1960s driving gloves' back feels very good in the hand, and increases your grip on the Nexus 7. There's also a very attractive metal rim around the bezel area of the device, which adds a nice touch of quality to this relatively cheap tablet.

In my opinion, the seven inch form factor is brilliant; I prefer this to the larger nine or ten inch tablet offerings such as the iPad or Motorola Xoom, as well as Samsung's larger Galaxy Tabs. For me, a ten inch tablet is getting dangerously close to my 13 inch Macbook Pro in terms of size, and the whole point of me getting a tablet was so that I wouldn't have to lug my Macbook around everywhere. Similarly, I didn't want to have to stare at my phone screen for some on-the-fly tasks. The Nexus 7's 800x1280 IPS display is simply beautiful, and the high resolution on a relatively small size screen makes everything super crisp and clear, making this an ideal device for tasks that require a lot of reading, such as heavy web browsing or book reading. Hell, you could even create and work on full office documents on this thing - the screen's that good.

Without doubt though, the best thing about this size is that you can operate it one handed, and type with two thumbs as you would on a smartphone. It's also extremely light and portable, and even fits in the back pocket of your jeans.

The Nexus 7 ships with the latest version of Android, 4.1 Jelly Bean, which isn't really a totally new version but more of an evolution of Ice Cream Sandwich. While it may look pretty similar to the previous version, it performs very differently. Google 'declared war on lag' with something called Project Butter (they do know how to name 'em!) which makes a huge improvement to the overall performance of the operating system. While it doesn't really feel ridiculously faster than Ice Cream Sandwich, it's the consistency that Jelly Bean brings that really impresses - the transition smoothness between apps is, I'd say, on iOS levels of responsiveness. Also, I've noticed that the actual touch response is better, but this could be something to do with the display rather than the operating system.

A lot of developers are also optimizing their apps specifically for the Nexus 7, which means that some of your favorite apps from your smartphone will look just as good on your tablet.

One of my favorite features of Jelly Bean is the new notification style - the bar itself has been refined and looks better in my opinion, and you can perform actions on each notification by swiping down on it with two fingers. This makes things just that little bit quicker and more convenient.

I've also noticed no issues with performance; the Nexus 7's quad core Tegra 3 processor and 1GB of RAM handle things beautifully.

Right now, after only a day, I'm loving the Nexus 7. It's fast, light, beautiful, and has a terrific operating system with a ton of excellent features. The range of apps is surprisingly good, and the fact that the device was designed as a kind of portal to the Google Play Store 'ecosystem' makes it really feel like it's worth something. Oh, and the best thing? You get all this for only £200.