Nexus 7 Review

Nexus 7

Nexus 7 seems to have been designed to give anyone who bought a Kindle Fire from Amazon.com Inc. or a Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble Inc. a lethal case of buyer’s remorse.
The Nexus 7 costs $199, the same that Amazon and Barnes & Noble charge for their tablets. But it’s better than theirs in significant ways, as it became clear to me after a couple of days of use. Google announced the tablet last week and is taking pre-orders for delivery in mid-July.
Why is Google targeting the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet? Because they’ve been relatively successful competitors to Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet, yet Google is getting no benefit from their success.
The Nexus 7 is a plain black slab with a screen that’s 7 inches on the diagonal – the same size as the Nook and the Fire. The most noticeable feature it has over the competition is a low-resolution camera, facing the user. That means the Nexus 7 can be used for videoconferencing, but it’s nearly impossible to use for snapshots. It also has a microphone, which the Fire lacks, making Amazon’s device useless even for audio conferencing.
The screen has a higher resolution than the Fire, and colors look more vivid. The whole tablet is slightly thinner and appreciably lighter than the Fire.
Other nifty but invisible hardware upgrades on the Nexus 7 include Bluetooth and GPS chips for use with headsets and navigation software. The tablet even has a chip for near-field communications, which means it can “talk” to some phones and store payment terminals when tapped against them. I used the Nexus 7 to pay for toilet paper in a drugstore.
But the most important difference between the Nexus 7 and its prey is the software. Not only is it running stock Android, but it’s also the first device to run the latest version of Android. Google, with its trademark combination of cute and cutthroat, calls it “Jelly Bean.”
Stock Android gives Nexus 7 access to a much wider array of applications than its competitors, running into the hundreds of thousands. The diversity also applies to content: You can use a wider range of e-book stores and movie services on the Nexus 7. You can read Kindle books on the Nexus 7, for example, but you can’t read Google books on the Kindle.
Google does its best, though, to steer users to its “Play” store for apps, movies, music and books. Buyers even get a $25 credit toward store purchases, partly defraying the cost of the tablet itself.