The Nexus 7 "Real-user" Review: Part 2 - User Interface and Entertainment - Media, Gaming, Browsing and Jelly Bean

Welcome to Part 2 of the Nexus 7 review. We'll be covering the abilities of the Nexus 7 when it comes to Music, Video, Browsing, Gaming and Other Media. If you missed Part 1 of the review you can find out about Murray's Initial impressions, Design/Build quality, synthetic benchmarks and performance in actual-use right here

If you want to know how the Nexus 7 performs when it comes to media consumption then keep reading after the break


The Nexus 7 has been pegged as a media consumption device boasting it's abilities such as

• World's largest collection of ebooks (with over 4 million available)
• Instant availability of HD movies and TV shows
• Hundreds of magazines available for reading
• Being designed with gaming in mind and having over 600,000 apps and games available
• Google music cloud streaming service for up 20,000 songs with the ability to purchase more

Made for Google Play - only in the U.S.A.

While this all sounds great in theory, unfortunately outside of the U.S. most of these services are not available  unless you utilise tricks such as using a VPN service to fake being in the U.S. 

Here in New Zealand we are incredibly limited in terms of which of the above features the Nexus 7 provides

• We don't have access to any of those 4 million eBooks
• We don't have access to any HD movie or TV streaming services 
• We don't have Google Music streaming or track purchasing

To top it off the 8GB model of the Nexus 7 has only around 5GB of storage available for apps and media. This essentially means the Nexus 7 as a media consumption device outside of the U.S. is crippled. While I'd like to blame Google for the lack of services available in NZ I know that its actually the fault of large media companies and their archaic licensing schemes. There is not much of an excuse for excluding a Micro SDHC slot though, and this would have alleviated most of my concerns in terms of media consumption.

Plex might help out with storage issues

Now if you're more of a self-help kind of person who 'obtains' their media through other avenues, you may be able to find alternative means to consume media on the Nexus 7. Once again the limited storage space means you're going to need to find a means of streaming your media to the Nexus 7 over your home network  and internet. This is where products such as Plex come in handy - allowing you to stream media from a Windows/Mac/Linux computer both locally (over WiFi) and over the internet. As the Nexus 7 has no mobile data connection you will of course be limited to WiFi networks when you're out and about, but hey it's better than nothing right?

Now the other option for media consumption is storing it on an external device such as USB thumb drive or portable USB hard drive. While the Nexus 7 supports limited USB OTG out of the box if you root your device using our guide here you can install an app called StickMount  developed by Chainfire to connect portable storage using a USB OTG cable. 

If you're willing to find a way to overcome these challenges then you'll probably be keen to find out how the Nexus 7 fares when it comes to playback of media. While I have not exhaustively been using the Nexus 7 I have spent a fair amount of time using it and will try to cover off the common questions you might have.

Music

Google Music

Firstly, the Nexus 7's storage limitations severely hamper any listening ability unless you use a VPN to enable Google Music like this article over at XDA. Secondly I haven't spent a long period listening to music on the Nexus 7 - primarily because I already have a Galaxy S3 with all my music that I listen to every day. I'm fairly certain that in a lot of cases the music playback ability of the Nexus 7 will be somewhat superfluous due to overlapping functionality with other devices. 

In terms of functionality, Google's Music app in Jelly Bean is pretty standard and unfortunately doesn't appear to have any tablet specific features. It feels like having an over-sized phone interface - and not in a good way. It also lacks the ability to do anything fancy like scrobbling, automatically downloading cover art  or displaying lyrics. It does have an equalizer, although I tend to think that in most cases this should be unnecessary if a song was recorded well. 

My quick and dirty test of audio quality was to listen to some songs streaming across both the Nexus 7 and Galaxy S3 using Google Music. Most of my music is indie bands such as Tokyo Police Club, The Whitest Boy alive, The Radio Dept., and the Temper Trap. Bear in mind I had no indication of the streaming quality as Google Music does not provide this. 

Now I'm definitely no audiophile and I generally just listen to music with my Koss PortaPros but I found that the Nexus 7 sounded a little muddy compared to the Galaxy S3. It felt like I wasn't getting the full dynamic range and lower frequencies (bass) felt over-represented yet muffled. Perhaps this could be corrected by fiddling with the equalizer but the Tegra 3's DAC definitely shows it's weakness here compared to the Wolfson DAC in the S3.  

If you are not too fussed about audio quality you could probably get by using a music streaming service such as Rdio or Spotify - although you'll need a constant internet connection to make the most of them. 

Overall the music performance is below average and as a portable music player the Nexus 7 doesn't really fill any niche due to it's lack of storage, large size (relative to phones) and lack of 3G connection. 

Video

Stick em with the pointy end

Theoretically the Nexus 7's fairly sizeable 7" 1280x800 resolution IPS display should make for a great viewing experience. In practice it is pretty decent with a fairly sharp image and brightness that is good enough for watching indoors.

Codec support is pretty good once you install Dice Player or MX Player and it can handle most files you'd want to be streaming over Wi-Fi. If you have any files that use DTS audio then be aware that latest versions of both Dice Player and MX Player have both removed this due to licensing problems. You can still grab an older version of MX Player here and just be sure not to update. 

I did try and play a 1080p h264 video of The Lion King which is 8.58GB in size but it was unable to play, probably due to file size being larger than 4GB more than anything else. As the screen resolution is closest to 720p it's unlikely you'd want to be watching such large files anyway so this isn't likely to cause an issue for most. 

MX Player with Hi 10P Video

Unfortunately if you're an anime fan you'll find that hardware decoding of Hi 10P video is not supported. What this means is that you will have to set MX Player to software decoding to be able to play Hi 10P video and even then it won't always run smoothly - even with 4 cores working hard. This is not terribly unexpected and as far as I know there are no mobile chip-sets that provide hardware acceleration of Hi 10P video.

In terms of form factor, the Nexus 7 is a lot better for extended viewing periods than say an iPad or Asus Transformer which are both 10 inches and weigh substantially more than the Nexus. That said, I often do wish I had a kickstand or something to prop the Nexus 7 up. this was especially apparent during an overnight stay in hospital where I used the Nexus 7 as my primary entertainment device. It's possible that we will see cases that provide kickstand functionality for the Nexus 7 and hopefully sooner rather than later.

Overall the video playback capabilities of the Nexus 7 should be good enough for most, although the storage limitations will probably start to chafe a little unless you use one of the aforementioned workarounds.

Browsing

Chrome browser

When it comes to browsing the default Chrome browser is both a blessing and a curse. It's fast, has a decent interface and has Chrome sync which is great if you use Chrome across multiple devices like I do. Where Chrome falls short is it's lack of Flash support and lack of quick controls.

Unfortunately Chrome being the default means that installing some alternative browsers does not work. Dolphin Browser and Opera Mobile work but ICS based browsers such as ICS Browser Plus do not.

While Chrome for tablets uses a slightly different User Interface (UI) than for phones which is much better suited for the larger screen, there still seem to be instances where the browser is detected as a mobile phone so you are forced to request desktop site for full functionality. This is more the fault of website developers than anything as the majority of websites do detect the Nexus 7 correctly and display content correctly.

Sunspider score

In terms of browser performance the Nexus 7 is not quite on par with the Galaxy S3 but most of the time is smooth for scrolling and the 7" screen means you usually won't need to zoom in. In Sunspider it scored 1790.5ms which is slightly worse than my S3 which scored 1337.9ms (yes it's elite but barely).

Most mornings I would prefer to read my news using the Nexus over my S3. This was primarily because the size was more pleasant for reading on the couch but I also wanted to save battery on my S3 at the start of the day. I rarely took the Nexus 7 to work just because it's virtually useless for browsing on the go since it doesn't have 3G capabilities. 

Gaming

Flying around as batman is pretty awesome

Since the Nexus 7 has a Tegra 3 you'd expect it to be fairly capable when it comes to gaming and in most instances it is. The Tegra 3 has been touted far and wide as an amazing SoC but unfortunately has a fairly middling GPU that sometimes isn't quite up to the task of pushing pixels on a 1280x800 display. When it came to high end titles such as Batman: The Dark Knight Rises the Nexus 7 struggled to keep the frame-rate smooth and noticeably stuttered in most outdoor areas. This was quite a contrast when compared side by side with the S3 which is a lot smoother - perhaps unsurprising though. 

Shadowgun still looks great

Titles from last year such as Shadowgun perform much better and still look pretty sweet- probably due to being optimised for Tegra devices. Shadowgun still runs pretty smoothly on Tegra 2 devices such as when I reviewed it on the original Asus Transformer. Other Tegra optimised games such as Dead Trigger which is very recent run smoothly so the Nexus 7 is fairly competent depending on the title chosen.

The 7" display on the Nexus 7 is fairly well suited to holding in two hands as if you were holding a game-pad, however it does become uncomfortable after playing for for an hour or so. Fortunately using a game-pad is an option here, however it would work a lot better with a kickstand. 

Dead Trigger has some pretty slick water effects

While the Tegra 3 SoC is not the most powerful out there, it has enough grunt to power most 3D games available on Android today. The gaming experience on the Nexus 7 is definitely enjoyable and I would consider it to be on par with most recent high end Android devices that are available today. 

Other media

While I'm not entirely sure what 'Other media' means, I couldn't think of a good heading for talking about comics, eBooks, news and social media so there you go.

Comics 

The Walking Dead comic

I don't mind admitting that I enjoy reading manga or comics and with apps like ComiXology and Marvel Comics available on Android it's pretty easy to purchase and read them on the Nexus 7. One of my favourite series The Walking Dead even has the first issue available for free to get you started. I tend to think a 7" screen is a great size for reading comics and the Nexus 7's resolution means that text and images are easy on the eyes too.

News

Google Currents

While I tend to be more of a Google Reader type and want to make sure I have read everything in my RSS feeds, sometimes I just want to use a nice UI to browse through some recent tech news articles. Google Currents on the Nexus 7 fits fairly well into this niche and the UI works quite well on the 7" form factor.

Google Reader

Unfortunately Google Reader doesn't fare so well and the UI on a tablet is pretty nasty to use as it doesn't utilise any of the extra space available. This is especially apparent when you want to go back to your list of feeds and have to reach all the way to the top left hand corner of the screen. Not exactly the ideal tablet experience here.

This is actually a fairly good example of an app that just hasn't been optimised for the tablet UI. This seems to be fairly common but hopefully the Nexus 7's popularity will mean more developers work to create a better user experience for tablet users in future.

eBooks

In terms of eBook reading the Nexus 7 doesn't really compare to e-ink readers such as the Kindle but is more pleasant to read on than most phones. Having the ability to get books from virtually anywhere also helps with making the Nexus 7 a good platform for reading on.

Social Media

In terms of social media I mainly use Twitter, then some Facebook for keeping in touch with family and ocassionally have a scroll through Google Plus.

Twitter

The official Twitter client blows. 

In terms of Twitter functionality I have to be blunt - the official Twitter client is fracking awful. It's bad enough when I'm using a phone but it is actually very very bad on a tablet. There is just no advantage to the larger screen and it definitely doesn't follow the Android design guidelines. I really do not understand why Twitter can't just bring out a decent official client!

Kind of strangely designed..

Even third party clients don't do a whole lot better with Tweetcaster trying to utilise the extra space but having a fairly unintuitive and unattractive UI that also completely ignores Android design guidelines. Another third party client Plume seem to have a nice phone UI that allows for swiping between twitter streams, however for some reason this no longer functions on the Nexus 7.

Facebook 

My Niece is adorable, Facebook is not

Another social media giant Facebook would be expected to have a half decent client for Android tablets right? well think again, it doesn't. Why can't social media companies get it right when it comes to mobile devices? I don't know but it definitely is frustrating. 

Friendcaster

The alternative of course is to use a third party app like Friendcaster but even that doesn't work very well with a huge amount of wasted space in landscape mode.

The Facebook website

To be honest if you want to use Facebook on your Nexus 7 - open Chrome and type in Facebook. This is really the least painful way to use Facebook and you don't have to install anything that could potentially drain your battery.

Google Plus

Google Plus FTW!

So while all the other social networks fail to implement a good Android tablet application, Google (thankfully) succeeds. Google Plus works very well on the Nexus 7 - my only qualm is that hardly anyone that I know actually uses it. While it feels silly to say it, I was surprised at how well Google Plus worked on the Nexus remembering that other Google applications such as Reader are not optimised at all.

So overall in terms of social networking capabilities the Nexus 7 falls a little flat purely because there just aren't that many apps on the Play Store that fully utilise the tablet interface. Hopefully things will improve with time and increased tablet popularity but until then other form factors are easier and more pleasant to use.

Loose Ends

Sensors

Front-facing camera

While the Nexus 7 has a 1.2MP front-facing camera it doesn't have a camera application build in so you'll have to download a third party app if you want to take photos of your ugly mug. Otherwise you can use the Nexus 7 for video chatting via Skype or Google Talk and it works just fine. 

I'm actually really glad that Asus didn't put a rear facing camera in the Nexus 7 as people taking photos with a tablet (even a 7" one) look ridiculous. 

GPS

While GPS isn't really relevant to entertainment I thought that perhaps a brief mention might be relevant as we didn't cover it in the first part of the Nexus 7 review and some folk might be worried after the issues prevalent with the Asus Transformer Prime. 

While I can't attest to the tracking performance of the GPS, it appears to lock onto satellites in under 30 seconds and the signal also appears to be quite decent. One thing you might want to think about if buying the Nexus 7 as a GPS unit is that getting a GPS lock will take much longer without a data connection to use AGPS and Google Maps won't be fully functional without a data connection either. 

Accelerometer

The only other sensor that most people care about is the accelerometer which appears to work well with the screen rotating to landscape in under a second when the application at hand supports it.

Jelly Bean UI

Portrait homescreen

While Android has been getting progressively better since it's inception, with Jelly Bean it is getting to the point where its more about polish than revolutionary improvement. In that regard Jelly Bean is very successful, it adds a lot of polish to an already very cohesive OS. In terms of the Jelly Bean version that the Nexus 7 is running, I would describe it as a hybrid tablet/phone UI. The stock launcher does not allow for rotation into landscape mode, and it appears most of the UI has been designed around holding the Nexus in this orientation. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, however it doesn't do much to make the Nexus 7 stand out from being an oversized phone experience (much like the iPad in that regard).

If you do want to use the Nexus 7 primarily in landscape mode the nyou could try installing an alternative launcher such as Apex or Nova Launcher which both have beta releases with Jelly Bean functionality and are highly customisable. 

One of the improvements with Jelly Bean is that the notification bar has had extra functionality added to try and display more information at a glance. An example of this is showing a small version of a screenshot you just captured, or being able to expand the details of an email you just received by pinching. 

The icons are hovering...

Another fairly subtle but very welcome improvement is to the Launcher allowing widgets or icons to move out of the way when you are trying to add or move another widget or icon. This is fairly hard to explain in text or even screenshots but trust me - it definitely adds to the experience and fixes something that has been annoying me for quite some time on Android. 

By and large the most noticeable improvement that Jelly Bean has brought to Android is consistent smoothness of the UI with project butter. The Nexus 7 is typically very smooth and doesn't have any of the micro-stuttering apparent with some other tablets on the market. This is something that you really need to experience for yourself as even videos don't do justice to how responsive everything feels. 

Google Now

Accessing Google Now

Google Now is another new feature introduced in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The application is accessed by holding down home and sliding up to the Google icon. Now provides two separate pieces of functionality, firstly cards providing information and secondly voice commands that rival Siri/S-Voice functionality.

Google Now's Weather Card

Cards

The idea of the 'cards' functionality is to provide you with information when you need it. The selection of cards is based on your location, activities in your calendar and things that you search for. This means if you have a flight booked it will show you flight or traffic delays, if you have an appointment it will show you the route and any traffic issues you might encounter. In my case it only shows weather or routes to locations that I've searched for recently. As more cards are added it will potentially become a lot more useful but as it stands now 'cards' is not terribly impressive.

Voice Actions

Clearly a smart app

The other piece of functionality is an evolution of the voice actions that have been available in Android since Froyo. While previously you could do things like navigate to a location, call someone or perform a web search. With Google now's voice you can do more advanced things like ask questions and receive a specific answer. 

Google Now Voice Actions

For example I asked 'How tall is mount kilimanjaro' not only did it understand me, it brought back a result from Wikipedia almost instantly then proceeded to dictate to me with a male robotic voice in a British accent. You can also ask it to do things like ask it to perform calculations or provide a definition for a word. If it isn't able to provide an answer right away it will provide Google search results instead. The voice recognition isn't perfect and it can't always find everything you ask for but it is definitely a step in the right direction. 

Google have enough resources and data to keep improving Google Now so I'm sure that it will continue to become more useful in the future.

Wrapping Up

While the Nexus 7 is quite a capable tablet is has several limitations that could affect your purchasing decision. Firstly there's the limited storage that can be partially overcome, and secondly it has no 3G connectivity so is limited in the number of places that you can fully utilise the functionality. 

Then there's the question of whether or not you personally have a use case for a 7" tablet. I found that it became somewhat superfluous to my needs and I often used it purely because I was reviewing it and wanted to get a feel for it over a reasonable period of time. If you don't have a high end Android device like the Samsung Galaxy S3 already then you might find the Nexus 7 hits more of a sweet spot for you. This brings me to probably the most important aspect of the Nexus 7.

Pricing

While in the USA the Nexus 7 comes in at a very competitive $199 USD (~$250 NZD) for the 8GB and $249 USD (~$310 NZD), in New Zealand (NZ) the Nexus 7 is a far less palatable $439 NZD. 

While I would definitely be willing to overlook the storage and connectivity limitations of the Nexus 7 at $300, I'm far less likely to when it costs $140 more than that. At that price I would definitely look at other options like the Huawei Mediapad which can be found for ~$250 NZD and has 3G capabilities as well as expandable storage or for the even more budget conscious, perhaps the Ainol Novo7 Elf II.

Verdict

Depending on your personal needs you might find the Nexus 7 fits the bill or in this case (four hundreds and two twenties). It is definitely a very capable media consumption and gaming device with perhaps some minor downfalls. 

Personally I wouldn't fork out the $439 being asked for the Nexus 7 here in NZ, but if you can pick it up for closer to $300 then this is a quality device that could fill a particular niche in your gadget portfolio.

If price doesn't bother you and the 7" form factor is right for you then the Nexus 7 is available at most consumer electronics retailers in NZ. Alternatively you can look around for a better price on ebay as the Nexus 7 becomes far more appealing the lower the price goes.