Time and technology march on. A couple of months ago I wrote about the Nexus 7 and how it compared to my first tablet which was a Toshiba Thrive. Since then they have come out with a new Nexus 7, called…are you ready for this snazzy name? "Nexus 7 (2013)" Yeah, they even use the parenthesis. I think that is really forward thinking naming; not. I have also heard non-official references to the Nexus 7.2.
As luck would have it my wife’s Thrive of many years stopped functioning properly and she had used my Nexus 7 some while we were on vacation. I told her about the new Nexus that just came out and being the wonderful wife she is, she had an idea. A great idea in my opinion. She thought I should let her have my old Nexus 7 (about 5 weeks old) and I should get the 2013 version, since geeks should always check out the new equipment. What a fantastic and brilliant wife!
So I got one a couple of weeks ago. It really is nice, not a tremendous amount better than version one, but nice none-the-less.
The original 7 had the same 7 inch screen and weights 0.75 of a pound. The newer one is, by comparison a light weight at 0.64 lbs. The screen resolution is higher than the retina display you have heard about in other tablets. It has a LED-backlit IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and 323 pixels per inch. To those of us who are half-way normal people that just means that it has a very sharp, clear screen. Movies run on it very well and it advertises a nine hour Hi-Def video playback. The most I have run it so far was to watch about four hours of HD videos, including some on Netflix. That took it down to about 50% battery life left. I had also played a few games and checked email throughout that time. That makes me believe in their advertised battery length.
It comes with the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system which is the latest one out there. Google is constantly fixing and updating as I have had two updates since I got mine.
The 2013 model also has a camera on the front (1.2MP) and back (5 MP auto focus camera with face detection; 1080p video recording @ 30fps), unlike the original which only had the front facing camera. One problem I had with the original is that it would not work with Skype which I had planned on using. The new one works fine and I have had a decent video conversation using it.
I will not get into the processor speed here but it is faster, much quicker than the original which was very good, too. There is a noticeable difference. The last thing I would mention is that it has two speakers on the back now instead of one so it is advertised as stereo. In my opinion, it is like all tablets. The sound system leaves a lot to be desired if you want to listen to high quality music with the tablet speakers but I think that is the same with any tablet. However, when using a nice headset or ear buds it is very good indeed.
My opinion is that if you are in the market for a good seven-inch tablet this is the one you should take a serious look at.