Nexus 7 Tab by Asus

In July 2012, Google announced its nexus edition of phones and tablet, Asus a fairly known company in Kenya when it comes to the manufacturing of computers had the privilege of produce a 7 inch nexus tablet. This was the first time such a tablet was being produced and Asus took the opportunity to produce this $199 tablet as dictated by Google. As we all know, we as a Kenyans have never had the chance to lay our hands on locally sold nexus unless we source for them from our connections abroad because it is too expensive to acquire locally. I do not mean to say that there were no nexuses being sold here but you have to pay arm and leg.

For the past one week, I have been reviewing the Asus Nexus 7 tab that was launched in the year 2012. I must say that it is one hell of a gadget given that it is a 7 inch tablet that 3G enabled with an amazing display that rivals iPad Mini. Being a 7 inch tab with an ergonomic design, it fits perfectly in my hands and given that I like carrying bags around, I was able to slip it in my pockets and walk around town without anyone noticing what I had on me.

This tablet is super-fast as it comes with stock Android OS with neat hardware configuration. It comes with a chrome browser which is fast even when tethered to my phone 3G network. In the short period of testing I've had so far, battery life seems pretty solid. Your mileage when gaming, watching video, and using more CPU-intensive apps will obviously vary. I'd also expect significantly higher battery life when using the Nexus 7 for simple tasks like video and music playback that allow the Tegra 3 to fall back to its power-sipping "companion core," but unless you’re using it as an overgrown PMP or you’re on a really long flight, you won’t stay in that low-power mode forever.

Inside the Nexus 7 you’ll find a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU clocked to 1.15GHz on four cores (or 1.3 GHz when running on just one), 1GB of RAM, and 8GB or 16GB of onboard storage. Unfortunately this tablet has no microSD slot here. In fact, the Nexus 7’s back panel is not removable at all. The device also packs in Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, and has a GPS chip, NFC, gyroscope, compass, and accelerometer. It’s also got a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, as well as a speaker embedded around the back of the device, and what appear to be a pair (there are two identical holes) of built-in microphones.

The Nexus 7 boasts a 1280 x 800 LCD display that’s covered with "Corning glass," which I assume means Gorilla Glass. The screen is 216 ppi if you’re keeping count — and it shows. Text and images look crisp and clear on the 7-inch screen — not Retina display quality, but not too far off either. Colors on the screen looked a bit washed out when compared to the super AMOLED of the Galaxy Nexus, but I’ll chalk that up to the exaggerated saturation of that phone’s screen. Next to the new iPad, things looked a little more balanced.

The Nexus 7 only has a front facing camera that camera isn’t really useful for anything but Google+ Hangouts and Skype — though it certainly gets the job done. If you’re one of those people who like to snap pics with their tablet, you’re probably out of luck here. There’s no camera app on the device. You can find a third-party replacement, and I did get one to work, but most of the popular camera apps don’t even show up in the Play Store.

Google’s Nexus 7 isn't just an excellent tablet at Kenya Shillings 44,999/=. It’s an excellent tablet, period. In fact, it’s the first Android tablet that I can confidently recommend to you as a buyer. It is the best-selling, a well-designed, powerful, and useful product, with lots of bells and whistles that makes it feel like a device that should be more expensive than it is. 

So far, ASUS has been able to ship 27.8 million units helped by strong tablet market growth of 142 percent in the last three months. ASUS jumped to third position beating out Amazon the makers of the kindle fire and grabbing a 5.5% market share. This tablet is now being stocked in Kenya and you can get yourself a 32GB version at Kes 44,999/=