Hands-On: Nexus 7 Tablet Is a Media Hub that Amazon Must Fear

Google and Asus have teamed up to build the Nexus 7 tablet, a rival to Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

I’ve only been using it for about a day now, but the Nexus 7 is already the best 7-inch tablet I’ve ever tested. Without question, it out-classes the hugely popular Amazon Kindle Fire. It’s also a better-performing device than Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet and Nook Color, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, Toshiba’s Excite 7, and anything else out there in this size.

The Nexus 7 is manufactured by Asus but serves as a full-fledged Android flagship device. This means it runs a completely pure, unadulterated version of Google’s latest mobile operating system — Android 4.1, aka Jelly Bean. The hardware was designed by Asus and Google together, and it just can’t be matched in terms of 7-inch tablet value.

For one thing, it’s the world’s only quad-core 7-inch tablet, and it will sell for $200 with 8GB of storage and $250 with 16GB of storage. The Google Play storefront has the tablet on pre-order now for shipment in mid-July.

Inside is Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor, a 12-core Nvidia GPU and 1GB of RAM. These internals give the Nexus 7 plenty of speed and processing power. When I first turned on the tablet, and logged into my Google account and began downloading content, swiping between different home screens was a bit stuttery. It wasn’t any worse than what I’ve experienced on other tablets, but I didn’t get the feeling the Nexus 7 was brimming with category-leading components.

That, however was a temporary problem. After just a few minutes — and after the Nexus 7 had finished downloading a ton of content, all at the same time — the tablet’s speed was apparent. I’ll put it simply: The Nexus 7 is a wicked fast tablet that can effortlessly switch between apps, stream HD video, play songs, and launch magazines. On top of all that, everything looks good on the Nexus 7’s 1280 x 800 touchscreen — books, movies, magazines, games and apps.

The main home screen features a widget called My Library that shows books, magazines, music, TV shows and movies you’ve recently read, watched or listened to. If you haven’t yet purchased anything from the Google Play storefront, you’ll still discover content in these buckets, as Google is giving away some items for free with its Nexus 7 launch. These include the movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a few songs, a copy of the Bourne Dominion novel, and a few magazine trials — Esquire, Popular Science, and Family Circle. A $25 credit to spend in Google Play is included as well.

The Nexus 7 is tailored toward consuming digital content. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

On the other home screens, there are widgets for the specific types of content Google sells — My Movies, My Music, My Books and My Magazines. Kindle Fire, much?

Below those widgets, distributed across the five home screens, are recommendation widgets that Google has built in to suggest what other movies, music, books or magazines you might like based on what you’ve already purchased. The widgets are nicely designed, showing off movie posters, album covers, and magazines in inviting detail. A tap on any image sucks you directly into that piece of content to read or play back quickly. The widgets are removable, but the design is attractive, and the hardware allows for quick recommendation updates without slowing down the device.

Before the Nexus 7, these widgets didn’t exist. Make no mistake, Google wants consumers to understand that it’s very easy to read, watch, listen to, and buy digital media on this tablet. The Kindle Fire won over consumers with a low price, ease of use, and a focus on entertainment. It was essentially a portable doorway into Amazon’s online storefront, which is the largest in the world. Google wants consumers to see the Nexus 7 the same way — easy and fun to use.

The operating system, Google’s Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, runs smoothly and quickly. There’s no hesitation when launching apps or playing games. And, this being a Nexus device, all of Jelly Bean’s new features are here in the Nexus 7, including Google voice search, which talks back to you in a new challenge to Apple’s Siri.

Time will tell if the Asus-Google collaboration is able to convince consumers to hop on board. I still have plenty of testing ahead with the Nexus 7 — I haven’t even yet tried out the front-facing camera or NFC features. But already I’m finding the latest Android tablet to be very easy to use, and even fun. I think Asus and Google have a winner here.

The Nexus 7′s 1280×800 7-inch display renders magazines beautifully and is ideal for reading. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired