GOOGLE NEXUS 7 : WORTH EVERY PENNY

Google launched its first 7-inch tablet at the 2012 Google I/O conference to much fanfare. We have a report from persons who had hands-on with Nexus 7, and have an insight into how it performs, especially compared to Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD...

As they booted up the Nexus 7 for the first time, a pleasant multi-colored X showed up in the centre of the screen to welcome us to Android's Jelly Bean experience. In this article, we measure the performance of the Nexus 7, and compare it to the recently released Kindle Fire HD.

OPERATING SYSTEM 

Armed with Google's new version of Android 4.1 a.k.a Jelly Bean, the tablet brings a whole host of new features that make it an appealing choice. One of the most interesting introductions to Jelly Bean is GOOGLE NOW, which is a virtual assistant like Apple's Siri, that can answer general queries about topics like weather and general knowledge. The speed of Jelly Bean is also impressive, faster as compared to Android 4.0 (ICS), as apps load up quickly and animation rendering is seamless. The Nexus 7's closest competitior, Amazon Kindle Fire HD, runs on a heavily modified ICS, which makes it sluggish compared to Nexus's pure Android system.

 

DISPLAY AND GRAPHICS

 The Nexus 7 has a rich HD display of 1280*800 display on a 7'' screen, which is exactly imitated by the Kindle Fire HD. The Nexus 7 hs a rich color saturation which is great for watching shows and reading e-books, but this is equally matched by Kindle Fire, which is optimized for content consumtion. However, the Nexus 7 renders games with much more ease than the Kindle Fire, thanks to NVIDIA's GeForce technology, and games like Dead Trigger work seamlessly on it. However, Amazon has upped the ante by improving the anti-glare technology on its display, as well as improving the contrast and sharpness, so it is a close race between the two tablets in this area.

PROCESSOR AND MEMORY

As mentioned earlier, the NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-core chip really shines on the Jelly Bean, making multitasking a breeze. During tests, we were able to open several apps and switch amongst them without a hitch. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire HD is powered by a dual-core processor, which is still mostly fine, but does lag behind the Nexus 7 when multi-tasking gets intense. However, the Nexus 7 does disappoint with its internal memory, as it just offers 8 GB for $199 model, while Kindle Fire HD offers 16 GB at the same price. Also, there is no expandable memory slot, so this may not be the tablet for you if you want to store tons of HD movies. Check out the video below to see the performance of Nexus 7.

PRODUCTIVITY AND CONNECTIVITY

Getting work done on the Nexus 7 is a pleasure, with an improved keyboard and with Google providing a way better prediction engine. A bigger selection of Official suite apps through Google Play also gives the Nexus 7 an edge over Kindle Fire HD. A big drawback of the Nexus 7 is the lack of 3G network support, which means you can only go online with a WiFi hotspot around. Although the Kindle Fire HD has dual antennas forbetter connectivity but it lacks 3G, as well as GPS and Google Maps. Since the Nexus 7 offers the latter two, it has more utility on the google operating system.

THE BOTTOMLINE

The Nexus 7 provides superb value for money at just $199 for the 8 GB version. Whether you use it for entertainment or productivity, it feels powerful and light giving it an edge over the Amazon Kindle Fire. The only one drawback is 8 GB of internal memory (as compared to Kindle Fire HD 16 GB), which may be a deterrent factor for some.