About two years ago I wrote in regard to buying my first tablet, a Toshiba Thrive. Well time has continued on as it usually does and I have come to the point where I needed a replacement. So I have recently purchased a Nexus 7 by Google. Yes, I know I have not been extremely nice to Google over the past couple of months but I am not their enemy.
Please do not misunderstand, the Thrive and its successor the Excite are both excellent tablets. I still believe for the price and features the Excite is one of the best out there. However, there are two things that I grew to not like as much with the Thrive, its size (form factor) and weight. It is a 10.1 inch screen and weight in at 1.7 pound. Almost two pounds does not sound like very much. However, after you hold it in your hands for a couple of hours reading the latest novel by your favorite author it gets to be a load. Even when you are switching back and forth from hand-to-hand, throw in a case of carpel tunnel and it just is not that comfortable.
In steps the Google Nexus 7 made by Asus. The “7” is for the screen size of seven inches and the weight is a mere .75 of a pound. Also, not that it matters tremendously but the 0.41 inch thickness is amazing in comparison to my Thrive.
I know I am not really comparing apples to apples here since the Thrive has many more features, some of which I feel should have been on the Nexus but did not make the cut. The Thrive was much thicker; however, that was so that it could have a multitude of access ports one each for USB, HDMI and for SD Card external storage. The Nexus has, like most other tablets, none of these niceties. Nevertheless, after using the Thrive for a couple of years I only used the SD Card but never really needed it that often, the others were good features I experimented with but did not use at any other time. For me the Nexus 7, actually built by Asus, has all that I need which is a tablet I can do all I need with.
Some of the advertised features from Google say that you get over eight hours of HD video playback, ten hours of web browsing or e-reading, and up to 300 hours of standby time. For the browsing and e-reading I agree that mine has easily gone that long. Regarding the standby time, I have not officially tested it but it goes for days without worrying about charging. I have watch two movies on it in a row and had more that 50% of my battery life left, so I can figure that video playback number from the Nexus marketing team is good too.
You can read more of the advertising about the unbelievably lightweight, the fantastic crisp, clear display and all the other great adjectives used to describe the Nexus 7 but my belief is that generally they are correct. It is a very nice tablet for the smaller form factor. Also, prices are now dropping for the Nexus 7 since the Nexus 7 version 2 is supposed to be out in the next couple of weeks.
It was recently announced that the Google Play Store has approximately 1,000,000 applications and over 50 billion downloads. You will not be alone if you own a Nexus or any other of the great Android devices.
