Hi it's product review time again and yes I got sucked in I went out and bought one of these Google Nexus 7 tablets. ah what was I thinking 318 bucks at my local JB high-fi everyone was talking about it. couldn't resist. It's uh, brand new here in Australia So much so that uh, it wasn't even on the shelves yet I they had to go out the back, get it directly off the pallet.

um I assured them that they had it and they went. Oh no, we don't No, we don't But yeah, they checked out the back there it was on the pallet and uh, well. I've reviewed the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet before and click here if you want to see that review and it was me I didn't really like it wasn't that useful. so I pissed it off, sold it and uh, but I got sucked into getting this because everyone says this is the duck guts in 7in Android tablets.

So I thought we'd see what it has to offer. Let's go Beauty Now although I paid 318 Australian bucks for this that was retail over the counter in a store here in Sydney but you can get it for as little as $199 direct from Google for the 8 gig version, this is the 16 uh gig version and that is an absolute steal for a tablet. and if you believe the rumors Google aren't really making a scent from it. it's not a loss leader, but they're not actually making any money from it and they didn't really intend to I guess But uh yeah, I don't know and they're probably making a little bit.

Eh, don't believe the rumors I Suspect we'll take a look at it in more detail of course. but basic spec rundown: 7-in IPS display with Cor in glass 1280 by 800 pixel resolution. Uh, which is a 216 pixels per inch? Not as good as the new iPad but not as bad as the Kindle Fire Um. 1280 by 800 resolution means that you can do uh, basically.

uh, 1280x 720 HD which is excellent. Um, it's uh, runs the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system Uh, it's got a 1.2 Meg front-facing pixel megapixel front-facing camera. It's got uh, neari Communications I.E Android Beam um which allows you to do you know, tap, payments, and stuff like that Bang. You know you pay for your widget or your groceries or whatever.

Um, and you can beam to other devices as as well. and 1 gig of RAM and 16 gig of storage space maximum. This is the 16 gig version. The cheaper one is the 8 gig version non-expandable and supposedly if you believe it, better than a 10hour battery life.

probably not going to be able to thoroughly test that in this review cuz I Want to get it up today? but anyway, ah, supposedly pretty good battery life cuz the thing will do a tear down the thing. it's mostly battery inside I believe as you get with these devices these days. but unfortunately, just like the Kindle Fire this I believe contains stuff not available in Australia Bloody Us Centric Crap. Hate it.

Why can't you just make it worldwide? Unbelievable. Anyway, only one way to find out. and here we go. It comes in a wanky little color like seven.

Get it with a splash of color? eh? whatever. Let's have a look at the Uh tag here. It's the model Nexus 7 isus of course isus are the ones who actually, uh, manufacture this in their Chinese Plant Obviously it's the Uh 16 gig. where is it? 16 gig version 1 gig of RAM and blah blah blah 1.2 Meg Camera one cell 4325.

That would be milliamp hours I'm assuming. um, it's got Bluetooth 2.1 yeah, blah blah blah 802 BNG as eh, whatever. Anyway, box, let's go. Ah, hang on a this is ridiculous.

This is ridiculous n that's just poor packaging I'm afraid not that it matters a rat's ass. but oh jeez, now I got to get the knife out. Oh it's all too much. It's all too much.

Don't like it? Anyway, here we go. Wank wank wank and we're in. It's a pit of Blackness It's a complete PL pit of black. Check it out and more black.

Jeez, they're really, uh, going for The Morbid Look, aren't they? we got an accessory pouch? eh? Warranty? Yeah. whatever. Uh. user guide you.

Quick start guide. Quick start guide. Look at the blah blah blah blah blah yeah, whatever. Don't care.

We've got a micro USB connector. Brilliant. Um, should charge from the the micro. USB Once again, the uh do we get a looks like we get a charger in here? We've got the Aussie adapter of course.

Um, very common for these power adapters. Now of course to come with like to be a universal adapter like this: Tada with the Aussie plug on it. so that's there we go. Um, it's a little bit round.

it looks like it doesn't take up more room than normal. Some of them come with big ears on and you can't plug them next to the ones uh, next to them and that's a real pain. but that's an Aus adapter. looks nice and that's a 5V 2 Amp adapter.

Pretty beefy. I Wonder what the charge time is? So that's our accessory pouch. and uh, here is the tablet itself. All wrapped up in plastic.

Generate the static as we undo this and Tada let's have a look. Got my grubby little porw prints over it. it's just complete. Black It's a feels, you know, reasonably.

uh, heavy and chunky. I Like the feel of this. it's almost. It's almost leathery goodness on the back that's actually quite nice.

Um, it is very reflective. You can see me. hi. There you go.

Um, so that's not great, but looks like we got another plastic bit of plastic down here. Oh, that's all. a C sticker and stuff like that. Who cares? and it weighs 335 G which is very significantly less than the Kindle Fire I believe which was over 400 GS but it still feels rather heavy.

but I guess just cuz I'm not used to using the tablets I'm used to using my Kindle uh, not the Kindle Fire but the Kindle um ebook uh reader of course with the eink display and they're much much lighter than these things. but anyway, um, it's it's not bad I guess for a 7-in tablet. And as for the back here, we have Nexus molded in Zeus molded in as well. and uh, it's got that lovely leathery feel on it.

trust me, that is quite nice and it's quite non uh slip as well. Granted, this is a rubber um, anti-static matte surface, but you can gesture and do all sorts of things and it doesn't really move much I Have to try other surfaces. but I really like we've got looks like a volume up down button here looks like a power button. one speaker over here and we've got a standard 3.5 mm um uh, headphone jack and micro USB Beautiful cuz everything standardized on micro USB these days.

And of course, on the front, we've got our front facing camera 1.2 megapixels and uh, a sensor. by the looks of it, ambient, uh, light or some other sensor. As for sensors inside, it's fully equipped. It's got uh GPS accelerometer, magnetometer, and a gyroscope.

Woohoo! And if we take a look at the speaker here, and also the leathery kind of feeling back on it rubberized backing, that's just a closeup there. It's really quite nice. But the problem with having just one speaker along there, of course, is that if you're holding it in your hand like this, watching a movie, hands covering the speaker I've yet to try that in practice, but uh, yeah, probably they wanted it along one of the other sides. or at least have a jewel one maybe at the top like that or something like that, but one along the side probably doesn't cut the mustard.

And of course, you'll note that's all the interface there is that micro USB It doesn't have, uh, any ability to connect to an external monitor, so there's no HDMI or, uh, anything like that so you can't hook it directly to your TV What a bummer. Now, curiously on the edge here, we have four gold contacts recessed and, uh, they seem to be some sort of interface. Perhaps I Tried measuring the voltage on there when it's powers on and off, but uh, I'm not reading anything on there. but um, there does seem to be some sort of connection internally, so probably um, I don't know.

Uh, maybe designed for some sort of cover or other sort of interface and there's another little hole down there. Not sure what that's doing. Guess I have to read the manual or it's a reset or it's a hard reset. uh thing where you can stick a pin in and of course I've haven't even turned it on yet, but you can see all the fingerprints over there so it remains to be seen.

If they you know, interfere with the Uh IPS display. Only one way to find out. Switch it on and here we go. Let's press the power button over here.

maybe got a to hold it down and Google o that looks that looks lovely that looks beautiful. And here's the IPS display and it really does look lovely and welcome. We're in and to stop Reflections off the display from the lights in the Uh lab here. I've had to uh, put a big Hood over the thing.

but let's uh, the thing you notice is the large black, thick black bezel. What is that? an inch or something like that? At least it's just. it's really huge on the top and bottom here. not so much on the sides, but really, that, uh, that does.

um, sort of detract from the overall uh experience of it. But here we go. English United States What other options we don't have? Australian English so we're going to have to. you choose the Yankee stuff and hit the big play button.

We're in Bang! There We go and we've got all our Wi-Fi connection. So I've chosen the EV blog lab here and uh, the keyboard. Let's give it a go, shall we? The keyboard seems to work fine so far. Let's connect.

Let's see how quickly it can connect. Obtaining IP address tablet is connecting. Boom! Do you have a Google account? You bet I do. And the good thing about having a Google tablet is apparently it's you know if you're a Google person like I am I use Google Docs I use Google I use Gmail I use You know Hangouts All sorts of stuff so everything is integrated into the Google tablet.

Let's give it a go. Yeah yeah, terms of service probably have to sign your life away. Let's go keep me up to date with news and offers from Google Play No No Spam. Thank you very much Let's go signing in.

This can take a few minutes. way back up and restore. Use your Google account to back up your app settings such as bookmarks and Wi-Fi password Ines another doll. If you previously backed up your account, you can restore it to this tablet.

Now you can change the backup settings anytime. Yeah, whatever. Okay, I haven't uh registered a tablet on Google before? use Google Location Location Services Use data from sources such as Wi-Fi networks to help apps determine your approximate location where GPS isn't available. Sounds all right.

Service to collect Anonymous location data. Yeah, how Anonymous is it I don't know. Anyway, give it a y can always switch it off I Guess it was just a sec. That's good I I Hate it when it just says just a sec and then it takes like a minute.

Set up concrete. Woohoo! Start shopping. You now have 25 bucks to spend in the Google Play Store Brilliant! I Can use and buy some apps. Fantastic! Be sure to check out free HD movie and books that have been added to your Google Play library.

Oh a free HD movie set up and ready to use. Bang we're in. These are all yours. Touch the view P purchases you've used recently Transformers Can we watch Transformers Can we? okay? I guess Dark of the Moon Can we watch it? I don't know.

Let's play Tada Let's see how good the Wi-Fi is. It's got to stream. it'll be streaming. of course it won't be.

uh TAA Here it is. Oh beautiful. And of course that's uh, 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It's not the full 169, so that's why it's not the full screen there.

Overmatched and outnumbered, our defeat was all but certain. Well, there you go. That's a fairly impressive uh example I don't uh I Don't mind that at all. The video quality looks excellent and the audio sounds okay.

sitting on the uh, just you know, sitting there. but let's actually play that hold it with our hand. It muffles it a bit, but not a huge deal by putting your hand over the side of it like that. so that's that's not bad.

So let's the angle on it. It's not the best, it's very dark uh video but it seems to work. Our final hope a treat I Like it getting some reflection on there but it does play videos very well. and really I don't uh, notice any lag in this at all? It's uh, it just seems to be very quick.

But let's go home and bang we're back to home here. All right, let's type e V blog and see what we get. Oh I could have I could have picked it from the list there. It came up reasonably quickly and it has rendered my site very well.

It's rendered all the ads. this is just a standard WordPress uh side of course, but it seems to have rendered that quite nice. I like it and uh, can we play the embedded YouTube video. Let's go there.

We go make Aot tear down. it plays in better YouTube videos No problems at all. Let's see if we can jump that to full screen. there.

let's pinch and zoom seems to work quite well. Pan across, not bad. Let's go to full screen on that. There you go and it's not going to sense the orientation once again.

And if we hit the home button, this is our home home screen here. and if we drag the taskbar down like this, there we go. We've got our time and date and stuff and 42 new messages in my inbox. Let's jump straight into email here: I Guess I Just hit it and we're straight into the email app.

Brilliant looks and works just like regular. Gmail As you'd expect and it's probably hard to see it, but the Uh 216 pixels per inch is more than enough. You really can't see the pixelization in this. It really is quite quite a lovely display.

I Really like it there San Oh isn't it cute. And if we go into our multi-purpose G+ menu down here, we get a whole bunch of googly goodness. Of course you got Google+ you got Google Maps Gmail uh YouTube people Google talk all the good stuff. So uh, let's go to my YouTube Channel and uh, let's have a look at it and is it oh I Discover Okay, we haven't Uh yeah.

okay, whatever. I don't care? Sign in. Oh do? I Why do I have to sign in? Why? why can't Oh, there we go. We're in.

It knows. I'm e Blog beautiful and by default it shows your history, your upload, your playlist, your favorites and you watch later. I Like it. So let's go into my uploads and uh yeah, yeah, beautiful.

That's it's very quick. It's very quick when it's accessing uh Google stuff. Let me tell you if we go bang and then we play on a video. My latest video and are we straight in? It's not quite.

It's not instant of course loading YouTube video playing directly but there we go. That's not bad at all. Well, it hasn't started yet. There we go.

It has bang. Although as a Content producer user, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to get into like uh my uh, you know my comments and my stats and stuff like that I got my channels and my channel feeds and things like that. but apart from that um I you know that's it. That's the YouTube thing.

I Go! I'm a Content producer, let me access my stuff I've gone into the Google Play Store and I'm going to install the Amazon Kindle app. so let's oops. I accidentally press something something there. Let's uh, try and see what uh, the Kindle uh functionality of this thing is like.

and if you drag down the uh taskbar at the top, you can see the uh progress in that and it already says a system update is available. So let's go in and view Android 4.1 system upgrade. Woohoo! Jelly Bean What? It doesn't come. Switched out of the box to Jelly Bean That's crazy.

So restart and install. Okay, going to install a new OS I Geez, it's like a brand new shipped to Australia Straight Out of the Box straight off the Uh, straight off the pallet at the local retailer and it's got to install a new update. Oh, we have a lovely little animated Android character here I Like it. It's uh, it's installing the update.

There's a progress bar down here and it'll get there eventually. You can see the fingerprints on there, you know? But yeah, that's part of the course. I think Android is upgrading optimizing apps eight of 17 Woohoo and we're back in And it picked up that Kindle installation exactly where we left off and the Kindle is now installed. So that's brilliant.

and uh I discover Google Now Woohoo! 55 minutes to work? Yeah well. I don't live in Meno Park in uh pal Alto California I'm sorry I live in Australia Oh yeah yeah, when you this is the Google Now functionality if you're leaving for vacation. whatever new message it just jumped up and displayed that I had a new email up there and uh, get Google Now Well yeah, I'll try it. but I don't think this uh actually works in Australia Well it certainly knows I'm at Borham Hills 55 but it doesn't know I'm Australian because if it was 55 here outside, uh, weird bit cookie so that's Fahrenheit not Celsius ridiculous.

How do I change that? g There we go. 14 Celsius I Just clicked on it I fixed it and there's they call them cards. These things. So cards show up when you need them.

Yeah right. Show more. Oh hang on no, let's go back. Recommended: Car Sales No what is it Recommended apps? No.

I Don't want recommended apps Anyway, if we go here and click that button, it shows all the apps apps which are installed I've that come pre-installed I've installed the Amazon Kindle manually. We got a calculator calendar Chrome Clock currents I don't know what currents is uh Google Earth Gallery Gmail local stuff goog Plus Messenger Maps It's all. it's all happening. Let's try Maps Well Google Maps uh.

Loaded very quickly with my initial location, but when I uh, have scrolled over here like this to Sydney it really, it's just hung there. it's not. uh, it's not really refreshing. that data no.

Finally decided to work. just a quick little uh Quirk there I don't know. Anyway, we're hide Park where Sydney there there's a Sydney Opera house. Maybe we can get up.

just try the satellite view here and bang there's Sydney that's uh, working reasonably well. I like it. that's that's pretty good. There's the opera house there the Harbor Bridge Mrs MC's point over here so that's working really good and it really is quite quick.

I Like it. let's zoom into to hide, park there. Yeah, oh, a little bit of a delay, but gee, no, that's can't really complain too much about that. It's loading the data from the Wi-Fi and that's pretty good, right? We're inside the Kindle app and of course ites doesn't download your books uh by default.

So um, this is one of the Uh books I've got in my library. Steven Hawkins Grand Design and uh, it's just downloading it now. Not terribly quick at all. but uh, how do you call out the menu? There we go.

Menu, jump, go to cover. Bang! we're in and of course we just swipe it. It's very quick, very responsive. I Really don't like how they've highight lighted these passages by default? Of course that's a Kindle uh feature of course, but um, on the Uh Amazon Kindle ebook reader? it? it just does a subtle underline on there and this has got like a purple text background with yellow font highlighted.

Oh yuck. But the text itself is beautiful. No problems at all. You really can't see the pixelization in that.

and of course you just pinch and zoom to an A automatically resizes the font size and the page as you'd expect. And of course, as with the normal Android stuff, you've got several screens available to put all your icons and your apps and stuff like that. All right. I'm inside Google Plus I don't really use Google+ but I do want to try the hangout feature and I jump straight into that and bang.

It instantly came up and there. hey waiting for people to join. I've started a Google Hangout and it was very quick. I Selected everyone in my circles and of course I don't have anyone yet.

but there's my uh I can't click on mine yet cuz it's not. It's not running, but we need someone please join please. And as for the camera it seems. uh, very responsive.

Got reasonable light here in the uh lab and uh, you know you don't have to hold it very far away. I'm probably a foot away from my face at the moment. Probably yeah, probably a foot away and uh, it's it's not bad. it's getting in frame I like it it seem the update rate seems.

uh, perfect. Here we go: I'm recording and R has joined me I just tweeted and uh Hey R How you doing good mate good and you're you've got a Nexus 7 as well. Yeah yeah I jumped on the bandwagon right? How do you find it? Yeah, it's really good. I've um I've I had an iPad for a few minutes and it wasn't my thing and I bought a cheap Cogan tablet at one point and I sent that back because it was no good.

but I'm liking the form factor and the kind of polish that they've put into the Nexus. So yeah, so far so good. Excellent. Why was the iPad crap? Why did you ditch the iPad Oh, it wasn't It wasn't crap I just didn't really need one at the time and um I wanton it so I yeah I didn't buy it and then not have it anymore.

It sort of just fell into my lap so got it. Excellent. Where did you pick up your uh your Nexus 7 tablet from cuz I had a hard time getting one I ordered it on Google Play So When the Google IO event was on announced it I just sort of went yeah we're looking at getting a tablet for testing mile sites so right bit of a spontaneous yeah inse purchase. So did that come from the US I think it was sh from Singapore looking at the uh the shipping.

so Google play in Australia will actually sell you a tablet right? Oh okay, got it. I just got mine at JB HiFi I'm going to uh try and can I hit this and get me up on the oh, hang on if I hit me, do I turn up on the no I don't How do I get me to uh a Chris Gamls just joined. Hang on. How do I get to choose me as the Google Hangout main screen I guess I can't this doesn't work like the PC version I Just called up Chris's profile.

he's joined me. he's my uh radio co-host on the Amp hour radio show and oh he's in there he is. hey no, no technolog is not working that great. hey Chris hello your connection sounds terrible, right? All right.

Well I don't know what's going on there and it's flicking back and forth. So one thing I've noticed about the Nexus 7 though is it's It doesn't seem to rotate. There's a if you go to the status bar at the top, swipe down. there's a an auto rotate.

It's the first icon next to the time. Oh right, got it. Oh doll. There you go.

There you go. I Spent half my review complaining that the bloody thing doesn't uh rotate. thanks R obvious once you know is this a review right now? D yeah this is a review really? Yep. so I'm reviewing this thing and then yeah I saw that I just retweeted little plug there great and um yeah I'm going to do a tear down after this so it's coming apart anyway I better get back to the review guys.

Thanks for joining me Rod r Do you want to give a plug for your new uh startup? Of course? Ara.com a r Ia.com Ara.com Check it out. Local experiences is where it's at. Awesome! Good luck. Hold it up all right thanks guys.

Catch you later and there you go. That was a live Google Hangout I Just uh tweeted it. Oh du finally figured out how to rotate the screen. That auto thing up there.

There's the auto rotate there you go obvious, so bang bang and it rotates very quickly I like it. So really that Google Hangout uh feature worked a treat I jumped uh, straight in there and it just worked. It was beautiful and as far as turning on, it's very quick. You switch it on, there, you slide it.

Bang You're straight in. Let's check out the calculator here. I've got the icon and by default it's scientific beautiful, not just a classic fall. Banger Four Function uh calculator.

It's not the world's best looking scientific calculator, but at least you can do it so you can put 10 the power of - 6 Beautiful. Let's try a better calculator. This is one. I Use on my phone I Use real Cal Scientific Calculator I'm in Google Play Store Let's install it, accept, and download bang, see how long it takes and see how well it works on a tabat There we go.

That was really quick and easy and Bang! we're in close and a look at that. Now we're talking beautiful that works awesome on a 7in tablet. And just the look of the display there. it's absolutely gorgeous.

It really is a thing of beauty. One of the great things about the Gooey is that you've got the multiple screens here of course and you can have as many app icons and other stuff as you like. but you've got your uh, your main ones down here by default. it's got these, but if you don't want that, for example, you can get it there.

or you can drag it up and and remove it right at the top. and then if we want well, we always want Gmail there we can just drag Gmail down into there and it's always there regardless of what screen you're on. So you hit home bang and you're straight there into whatever uh, main applications you like I like it and of course, with only a front-facing camera, it doesn't have one on the back. It's no good for taking photos for example.

So we can go into the gallery here and we can probably, uh, take photo, but you're going to be looking at it otherwise you got to flip the thing over and try and punch the button. Ah, forget it. One thing I don't notice. on the list of installed apps here is Google Docs.

So I'm going to try and figure out how to get that up. We've got something here called currents so let's go into currents and well, we've got various other things you can add more, but ABC News I'm interested in that and bang. We're straight in and that's the ABC News Top Stories I Rather like that. and to get Google Docs I had to install the new Google drive but uh, it certainly shows up all my uh documents and uh, we can create new spreadsheets and uh, Google Docs so it works well.

Let's try the desktop version. Boom! Let's yep, test there. There's our spreadsheet so it's like just like a it's turned around your Google Docs No problems at all. Actually, that's not panning.

Oh, it's panning the cells. There we go. It's not panning the it's not panning the whole screen. Don't trap for young players there.

What happens when we plug our micro USB cable into it cuz it charges. I've got it hooked up to my PC so bang went blank for a few seconds. It's installing the device driver software on the PC and it's recognized it as a Google Nexus 7. Please excuse the lack of screen capture here, but there it is.

It just has a separate Drive see and then Nexus 7 internal storage. Bang! We're in and we've got standard folders here. There's the Android folder and uh, we've got the Uh Dsim format uh folder for the images of course and uh, podcasts, pictures, movies, music downloads. Beautiful! So I'm going to drag and drop some stuff in here and see if we can view it.

That was real easy to uh upload stuff. So I've uploaded a movie and a couple of PDFs So let's try and play back the movies here. Bang! We're in personal videos. There we there we go there it is Jim Williams Pulser.

follow up. it's going to auto rotate. There it is. Let's try and play it.

This is a Uh full H oh that started real quick. This is a H Uh 264, um MPEG 4 full HD 1920 by 1280 and that works brilliantly. 169 Aspect ratio of course that's great. I like it and the uh viewing angle of the screen is really quite excellent.

I have no problems with that at all. it goes. and as you'd expect, the Twitter app works an absolute treat. No problems at all.

And as for viewing PDFs I've downloaded and installed the Adobe Acrobat uh reader and I've going into here. we can do it. It actually curiously, it says SD card zero whereas these things don't use SD cards. Go figure.

So maybe I don't know, hack it internally. perhaps. Anyway, I Created with the PC a PDF subdirectory down here. it allows me to browse them and there it is.

There's the PDFs It didn't automatically find them. by the way, it didn't like search all my folders and find them. So that's why I had to go into the folder mode here. but let's go in and view a data sheet.

Oh that's really really nice. Here's a linear Tech data sheet that's really quick that renders oh no. Ah, I was just saying. it renders real quick and we've got a fail there on the on the render engine.

Look, the text is just crap A What? that's bloody Adobe for you? Okay, it only partially renders that's crap. um I'm sure you know I Don't know if it's the just the Google Um, you know the combination of uh, this version of uh Android with the Adobe Reader app. but I think we need a better PDF app than this? Let's try another one downloaded one called Quaca and Bingo. Let's have a look and looks excellent.

Pinch and zoom. Beautiful. There you go. so clearly it's just a matter of getting the correct Acrobat Reader software or PDF reader software I'll tell you what the 7in format tablet is really usable for PDFs I I Really like it.

you don't need. You know, it's nicer to have like a 10in tablet or something like that. but the uh, the 7in one works an absolute read, especially with the Uh 216 pixel perin display. Now one thing I care about is how well my Eev blog Community Forum works on here.

and uh, really on the 7-in display in the portrait mode I can just read that text? it is. well, it's actually quite, uh, readable actually. I Think my forum's a bit slow at the moment I've had uh server issues so if there's any uh speed problems I don't think it's actually the uh tablet doing that and let's rotate it around and it's resized. that and that is a nice that is a really nice size for viewing a typical BBS style.

Forum font's a bit small of course you got to have going into General chat here I haven't uh logged in at all and in landscape mode it's rendered my ad up the top perfectly. They're my Forum sponsors and uh, that's really, really quite nice. It uh, seems to work a treat. There's the Forum post very readable in this landscape uh format I Really, really like it.

And by the way, the keyboard Works uh, very nicely indeed. in the landscape uh format or in the portrait format, it's well spaced I Got no problems at all I don't have necessarily, uh, big hands and big fat fingers, but uh, it does work. uh, quite well. There's some uh AUD audible feedback as you type and I got no problems with with it and I've decided to come outside I'd love to show you what the screen looks like Outdoors on a bright, sunny day, but unfortunately it's cold, overcast, miserable drizzling down here in Sydney today in the middle of winter.

Unfortunately, not the best Winter's day. But likewise, we've got four that's not 480. You got to multiply that by 10. so that's about 4,800 Luck.

So not exactly the brightest of bright days. but let's check it out. and here we go. You going to have to excuse the reflections? but those Reflections are real.

That's what I'm seeing as well. And there you go. It's actually extremely readable I Like it. Um, the reflections, of course, are terrible.

You've got to not get the Reflections in there. that's a reflection of the Cloudy gray, miserable sky here. but uh, that's PR Very, very readable, but as you'd expect, it's certainly not full sun. but.

but I've really got essentially no problem with this at all. Outdoors it uh, seems to be working a treat. So here's a video on theator. Last time, we tried to measure the performance and sizewise of course I think it's quite a nice form factor I mean that's it compared to the size of my hand.

and I don't have big hands at all, so it it really is. You know it's much more usable than the big 10in uh tablets. Much easier to slip into your uh bag or your purse or whatever. Not quite pocketable though.

of course that's not going to stop me giving it a go. Here we go. No, these aren't the world's biggest jeans I'm not young and hip enough I need those big baggy things where you show your underwear or whatever like that or you know they're hanging around your ankles. You know that's the young hip thing, isn't it for the kids? Ah, so I could play around with this thing until the cows come home and all fancy features in the Google Now or whatever it is.

But yeah, I'm not going to bother. I'll leave that up to you know other reviews and for if you just want to play around with it, go right ahead. But anyway, I think this is pretty awesome it doesn't You know? it hasn't really pissed me off in any way at all. Uh, unlike the Kindle uh fire I just immediately after the review I went what am I going to use this for and eh I just waed on eBay sold the damn thing.

but I'm not going to do that to this because I think it works. a treat and uh, if you're a heavy Google user like I am you use Google Mail you use Google Docs you use Google Hangouts and your YouTube and all your accounts are affiliated. this is the Ducks Guts works really well. I like the 7in uh format I think it's a good compromise on uh size and shape.

The build quality of this thing seems excellent in terms of uh, the quality of the materials used and the display is brilliant. Shame I didn't get to to try it on a completely sunny day. but I Don't use it outside much. don't expect to use it outside much anyway.

It'll basically be used around the lab be used around the home. Always got Wi-Fi connection and that leads to the one big drawback of this is the lack of any 3G capability at all. Wireless Um, as in you know 3G Sim capability. you can't do it.

One of the other big oversights is the lack of SD card memory upgradeability. that's You Know it's inexcusable, but maybe they had their reasons. Maybe they're trying to upsell you to, you know, their new cloud services or whatever they want to do. So it's probably a deliberate decision CU It wouldn't have cost any more to put that SD socket in there and have a little slid on the side, so obviously they clearly done it for a reason.

Little bit annoying. Definitely get the 16 gig version. Uh, of course, but you know I I mean for the price? I'm not going to complain really, but they're trying to push the price down. It's $199 I paid.

you know, over 300 AUST stray in but that's over the counter and well, it's excellent. The screen is great, just switched off. it's all black it's you know I think they could have jazzed it up maybe a little bit more, but the quality and the feel of it and the instant responsiveness is brilliant. It just works.

So pretty Dar happy with it overall. and it charges from the micro USB cable which I like I've standardized on that for pretty much everything. brilliant and uh, it does pretty much everything I want Gmail uh Google Docs uh Google Hangouts YouTube browsing does my Forum reads PDFs it plays videos if I want to play video I don't know if I go on a flight or something, you might want to load it up with some videos and 10 hours life. It's not going to quite get me from Sydney to La um for like a 14 hour flight watching a video.

but if it does meet, it's rated claim 10 hours. That's pretty dar good. I Think it's a little bit heavy, but ah well. you know that comes with the big battery life on this thing.

but I don't know. it's quick, it's responsive, it just works. I give it a big thumbs up I think they've got a real winner here. Um yeah, you might find a few annoying aspects to it on the software side if you're not into Google Uh, you know, if you don't have Gmail and Google accounts and everything, it's probably just like any other tablet, but the integration with Google is.

of course it's pretty good. It's not 100% it's not as good. Um, it's not as perfect as I expected it would be, but it certainly does work, especially on the YouTube side of stuff. But I like it.

They've got a real winner. You probably won't be able to buy one cuz the bastards will be out of stock I think so, so just fly off the shelves anyway. Hope you liked it. Catch you next time.