I have now had a Nexus 7 for a week or so, and the tl;dr I am quite pleased with it and would recommend it to anyone that does not currently have a tablet. As everyone keeps saying for £200 it is actually a very good product.

Disclaimer: this is my first android device: I have a Windows phone.

What Is Good About It?

The price: for £200 for the 16Gb model it is a bargain. There are other tablets out there for a similar price, but none seem to be as powerful, and fully featured.

The build quality: apparently there are odd cases of problems with screens, but mine is fine. It feels slightly heavier than you would expect, but then it does have a fair amount of tech inside it.

The size: despite it being a 7″ tablet, it is the perfect size for me to read ebooks, and most web sites in portrait mode.

The battery life: it seems to last as long as it claims.

The performance: it browses the web much quicker than I hoped, with practically zero lag for the websites that I browse (e.g. The Register, BBC News).

The voice recognition: 2012 is the first year I have tried this, and it is surprisingly accurate. Very surprising. In fact I am regular searching just using voice. It is that good, even when there is lots of background noise.

You can mount it as a USB drive and just copy things: you don’t need a crappy piece of software to do it for you. Apple (and Microsoft) take note.

Skype: the camera isn’t great, but it is mobile enough to move around the house/wherever with.

What is Not Good About It?

These are all pretty minor complaints, but worth mentioning for balance.

The build quality: whilst I mentioned above that it is fairly solid, there is a certain amount of flex on the middle left of screen bezel. I am told I can pop the case off and tighten a couple of screws, so I might just do that at some point when I feel more comfortable about it.

The keyboard: in comparison to my tiny WP7 keyboard, this one is surprisingly poor. The auto-correct is not very intuitive, and mistyped letters (and missing the space bar!) are frequent. Apparently I can replace the default android keyboard, so I may try that.

The applications: I know that there is, by now, a huge variation in layout and styles of application, but there are a surprising number of applications that insist on having buttons, and in particular the default application ‘back button’ at the top of the screen. I cannot understand why. When your hands are positioned at the bottom of the screen, that is where frequently used buttons should be. Microsoft have nailed this with many of the WP7 apps (and have the ergonomic data to show it).

The built in movie player and ebook reader are not very flexible: I don’t want to re-rip every video I have to play on every new device I buy. Fortunately, MXPlayer and Kindle play and show everything I need.

Which way is up? With the camera being inconspicuous, I spend 50% of my time grabbing the tablet the wrong way.

What are other people complaining about?

Storage: it only comes with 16Gb. Frankly, you should be able to manage with that. That is 10 or so well-ripped mp4 HD movies, and good couple of thousand songs, and a few dozen ebooks. If that is not enough for you, then get a different tablet. If you are looking to replace some other device with this and carry around everything, then this is wrong device for you.

Mobile/3G: it is not built in. That is what tethering was invented for, and that works well.

Camera: It is a tablet you know. If you want to take pictures use something else or you will look a bit daft.

The main screen is locked in portrait mode: everything else rotates. There are ways around with (see the xda developers threads) by rooting and changing the dpi setting. Frankly I am not that bothered.

Final Opinion

Unless you already have a tablet, or you’re locked into Apple and want to consume content from the web, watch movies or read ebooks: just buy one.