So, after a looong break from 'Paint, I'm back again. I'm bored as hell and I have nothing else to do, so I decided to start a review series

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Nexus 7

The Nexus 7 tablet is currently (note: Nexus 10 starts shipping on Tuesday) the latest and, by default, greatest tablet directly from Google. For this tablet, Big G worked together with ASUS. The N7 is marketed as a "value tablet" for those wishing to have a tablet without having to fork over $450+. I've had this tablet for about 2 weeks so I had some time to mess around with it and I figured I might as well write a review.

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Hardware Features

The Nexus 7 has just about everything you'd expect for hardware features, but there are definitely a few notable and unexpected ones.

From a dimensions standpoint, this tablet is pretty small. It is 7.81 inches by 4.7 inches and it is a miniscule .41 inches thick. I'm not sure on the exact weight, buy this tablet is significantly lighter than any of my previous tablets. The build quality is fairly good, but could be better. My last tablet was an HTC EVO View, which was pretty much the Nokia of gadgets these days. Its made mainly of plastic and glass with a rubberized back, but it still feels pretty sturdy.

The N7 has an absolutely beautiful screen. It may only be 7" versus the iPad's 9.8" and the iPad mini's 7.9", but it is incredibly crisp and vibrant. It comes in at 1280 by 800 pixels, which is 216ppi, just barely under the iPad's 264ppi.

Arguable the best part of this tablet is the processor. This thing's rocking a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, clocked at 1.3GHz, which makes this thing lightning fast. The Tegra 3 processor is mainly used in high-end tablets such as the ASUS Transformer line of tablets and the HTC One X smartphone (international variant). Along with an amazing processor, we also have 1GB of RAM and a 12-core Nvidia GeForce GPU. These features make this tablet excellent for gaming.

Other hardware features include a 1.2 megapixel front camera (no back camera), a micro-USB port, a standard 3.5mm audio jack, a stereo speaker on the back, a gyroscope, a standard 802.11 A/B/G/N WiFi radio, a Bluetooth 4.0 radio, and an NFC radio for Android Beam support.

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Software

As you should have known, this is running Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, soon to be upgraded to 4.2. The software is incredibly smooth compared to older versions of Android, thanks to Project Butter. Jelly Bean is much smoother and faster than any other version of Android. Android is still nowhere near as polished and refined as iOS, but Android offers endless customizability and tweaks. The Google Play Store is still not quite the size of the App Store, but its catching up and its catching up fast. The big con of the Play Store is that there are almost no tablet specific apps out there, where the App Store has 50000+ iPad specific applications.

Preinstalled on this device, you'll find the Play Store (along with Play Music, Movies and TV, Books, and Magazines), Gmail app, Google Talk app, YouTube, and a bunch of those other can't-live-without standard apps.

Overall, software is amazing, except for some tiny little detail: there is no native camera app. There's a camera, it works, but there's no built in camera app. You can still use a 3rd party app (like the fricken annoying Instagram app) to take pictures though.

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Price

This is where the Nexus 7 really hits the ball out of the park. The base price for Nexus 7 is only $200, which is incredible considering the iPad mini costs $330. The $200 base model is WiFi-only and only has 16GB of internal storage (no expandable storage). A $250 variant of the N7 has 32GB of internal storage, which is the one I bought and recommend. Lastly, there is a $300 variant that is 32GB and has HSPA+ capabilities to work on most major 3G networks.

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Overall

In the words of one of my favorite tech reviewers, this isn't just a great tablet for $200, its a great tablet period. I give it a 9.8/10, subtracting points for the lack of expandable storage. If you're in the market for a tablet, a highly recommend you consider this tablet.

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Depending on the feedback and popularity of this blog, I may start an Android app review series. I've seen plenty of iOS, DS, and Wii game reviews, so I figured why not start an Android review series.

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I appreciate any and all feedback, so please leave comments, questions, and concerns. Thanks for reading!