Google Nexus 7 Tablet

[Blake Bowden]

A couple of months back I sold all of my iPads but gave one to my ex and one to my oldest son. I've been tempted by the "New" iPad, but $500 for a 16 gig just didn't cut it for me, nor did many of the Android Honeycomb tablets. Finally, Google teamed up with Asus and created the Nexus 7. Does it have all the bells and whistles of the iPad? No. Does it kick ass? Absolutely! Prices start a $199 and comes with a $25 credit in the Google Play store! I opted for the 16 gig for $249 and even then, that's one heck of a deal!

It's fast, smooth and runs the latest version of Android OS 4.1.1. The only downside is reading magazines as they are a little small on the screen, books on the other hand look great! I've owned all variations of the iPad, Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi, Motorola Xoom 4G, and like I said, for the money, you can beat this device. Perfect device for those on a budget or for kids.

[video=youtube;cK8n54YiabE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK8n54YiabE[/video]​

 

[Brent Heilman]

Right now I am looking at either it or one of the ASUS Transformer tablets. I do like the Nexus for its price though. I played around with one the other day and the only problem I can see is the size. That is about the only drawback I see though.

 

[Dow Mathis]

Blake, any thoughts about the lack of expandable storage?

 

[mattcaler]

Love this and ESPECIALLY for the money. If size is an issue but you like Jelly Bean 4.1 I hear that the Motorola XOOM is either upgrading soon or already has.

 

[Blake Bowden]

I actually love the 7' form factor. It's perfect IMO. Storage? I did spring for the 16 gig but I have all of my music on the cloud and 653 movies in my library are streamed via Plex. Check it out:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5wbGV4YXBwLmFuZHJvaWQiXQ..

App Store - Plex

It's also available for iOS so you can have all of your movies streamed to your device. The other day I was at a friends house, I loaded up Plex, found a movie and air played it from my house. $5 for the app, server software is free.


Back to the Nexus 7, I have no regrets. The price is cheap, build quality is nice and it comes with a $25 credit, the latest Transformers movie plus numerous books and other freebies. And yes, our app runs beautifully on it Batter life is excellent as well. I'll probably order two more for my boys. It's a perfect size for them and the Tegra 3 Quad Core processor rocks games better than the iPad.

 

[KFerguson84]

Bro. Blake,
Go to http://www.xda-developers.com/ and click on forum. It is filled with guys who are programmers for all things electronic. Just find your device and start looking through everything they have to offer. There is a development section if you wanted to try different ROMs and a Q&A section for any possible question you could have. These guys are top notch. I'm positive that there is a way to make reading magazines easier by changing the dpi for the app you use to read magazines. The greatest thing about Android compared to Apple is that Android is open source, which means they encourage development of their programs. This means that anything on a device can be tweaked to accommodate the individual user. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note that I am already running the JellyBean operating system on. Ice Cream Sandwich was just released officially for my device about a month ago. I had been running it since March and am already on to the next OS. These programmers do tons of stuff for each device and its all free to download and try on yours. For instance, I am running a ROM that allows me to set the display for each app individually. So, if i like one app to use small font and tablet display and the other to use large font and phone display, I can do that and do so without having to go in and change settings every time I want to bounce from one to the next. You can make any Android device do pretty much anything you want it to and the developers at XDA do just that, then give it to you for free.