Divine intervention: Google's Nexus 7 is a fantastic $200 tablet

Like Microsoft, Google shows its own partners how one builds a tablet.

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[ScifiGeek]

Having maximum storage of only 16GB isn't listed as a Negative?

 

[ScifiGeek]

At $200 retail, Google can't make a profit on these Nexus things. Google simply isn't into this long term

Why not? Google Search is free. Google Docs is free. GMail is free. They are just executing on their business model: make money on ads and give the rest for free or at manufacturing costs. Just keep clicking the ads.

It isn't such a good strategy if you want other OEMs supporting your ecosystem. Ars called Surface a kick in the teeth to Win8 OEMs, but really it wasn't. There is still plenty of room/profit for them.

OTH this does suck the oxygen out of the 7" Android OEM tablet market.

If you are Samsung/Toshiba/HTC/etc... It is nearly pointless to have a 7" Android tablet. That market was already tiny, now you have to look at an even tinier/lower margin slice. It hardly seems worth the bother.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Having maximum storage of only 16GB isn't listed as a Negative?

How often do you really need that much space nowadays?

Anytime you are away from Wifi, which could be anytime you leave your house with it.

A single 720p Movie of medium Quality is 2-4GB. Games are getting bigger. Some music would be nice too. Even books add up.

16GB (how much is actually Free?) is a paltry amount when you are disconnected from the net.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Casey has sold me on this thing... or she would have if it was EXACTLY the same but in the 10" range instead. I already have a 5.3" phone (the Galaxy Note) and 7" just doesn't make a lot of sense for a Note user. But 10" is super typeable.

Agree.

But I wish there was something decent like the Galaxy Note, but was an affordable pocket tablet, not a phone.

5" is portable to me. 7" is not. And if it is not, I would rather have larger screen at home for couch surfing.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Dropbox is unusable for anything beyond documents and photos. A 5gb video file on a shared hotel/airport/whatever internet? No thank you, I'm not a masochist.

This X 1000. Heck I hate streaming video on my PC with Cable 15 Mbps fixed internet.

Would people make this ridiculous argument for getting a laptop with only 32GB of fixed storage and no expansion. Hey just put everything in the cloud and stream all the time.

Tablet are becoming more and more general purpose computing devices. If a 32GB laptop is ridiculous, why isn't a 16GB tablet?

Tablet games are now reaching going over 1GB, software applications are getting bigger/more complex, Media will eat 16GB for a appetizer.

The richer the ecosystem gets, the more miniscule 16GB becomes.

Saying 16GB is more than enough, is saying you don't really have much use for a tablet.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Why would Asus (an Android tablet OEM) manufacture the Nexus 7 for no profit?

They are contract manufacturer in this case and they will likely be paid some slim tiny margin (5% or under).

But that will probably be worth it because, there is no risk. Tablets so far have probably been money losers for everyone but Apple. R&D costs, production setup, then uncertainty about volume, then cutthroat discounts to clear stock when volumes don't pan out point to tablets being a money loser.

Here Google likely paid a significant portion of the R&D, production line setup, and guaranteed some volume numbers and some set margin. It might only be 5%, but it might also be the first real tablet profit for Asus (or anyone outside of Apple).

But this is not the kind of business that PC OEMs are looking for, they already stuck with razor thin commodity like margins in the Windows PC business, they were hoping to actually build tablet with decent profit margins, not immediately drive tablets into another borderline unprofitable commodity business.

 

[ScifiGeek]

I agree in general, I don't want to have to stream my media, prefer to have it stored locally. I do understand why for many 16GB is 'more than enough', my wife uses a Kindle Fire to browse the net at home. When we travel we'll throw a dozen movies/tv shows on there and have some entertainment. Handful of apps installed, plenty of space to spare.

I would like to know how you get a dozen movies/TV shows in the 6GB free on the Kindle?

 

[ScifiGeek]

I've seen 500 to 700 MB 720p movies that look very good on a 30+" 1080p screen.

You must be blind (and deaf)

I have seen 700MB 720p Movie encodes and they look like shit, and sound worse. When you get to that level of extreme compression, they are full of macroblocking. The problem with macroblocking is that it is big and obvious, and then there odd motion artifact as compression shift from frame to frame. Though on 7" screen you can get away with more of this.

But even worse IMO, is that in order to get a 720p movie into 700MB, the soundtrack are compressed to a horrid level. I have seen them under 56Kbps. Pretty much all of them are well under 128Kbs. Remember all the people screaming about 256Kbps lossy encoded music. I am not one of them. but 50-80Kbps is horrid and the same rates that apply to music apply to movies as they often have orchestral soundtacks and music in them. Do you think music encoded at 50-80Kbps is adequate? If not, why would this be OK for a movie soundtrack? This is the real killer of ultra-compressed movies for small devices IMO.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Exactly. Unless you're running around with $300 headphones (admit it -- you're using a $30 knockoff pair) the sound quality is also pretty moot; compressing video files for use on a tablet (or a phone!) makes sense.

Even $10 headphones can reveal how horrid 50-80Kbps audio compression is. I can't believe anyone is defending these kinds of bit rates. These are the kind of rates that are barely adequate for spoken word books.

 

[ScifiGeek]

And as others point out, what the hell are you listening on that takes advantage of super high bitrate sound with multichannel surround sound? If you want superb quality on your 60" 4k TV, then you have a different encoding than for your 7" tablet.

Super high bitrate? I am complaining about 50-80KBs Audio in ultracompressed movies. Which is super low bit rate, that you see recommended for spoken word. You can't adequately do decent stereo sound in that kind of bitrate, forget multi-channel.

 

[ScifiGeek]

The 2012 scene 480p x264 standard calls for 130MB per 30 minute episode. 6GB/130MB = 46 480p episodes (or 26 for hour long).

For 720p, its about 350MB for 30 minutes, which is 17 episodes.

X264 Scene releases are not that size. Here is what I see for live action (A little smaller for animation):

22 minute 720x404 releases are coming in around 150-180 MB.
44 minute 720x404 releases are coming in around 300-360 MB.
44 minute 1280x720 releases are coming in around 1GB.

So about 450MB/hour of low def, or 1.36GB/hour of HD.

So in Scene releases, 6GB will get you 13 hours of low def, or 4.4 hours of HD, if you have No apps, no music, no games.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Super high bitrate? I am complaining about 50-80KBs Audio in ultracompressed movies. Which is super low bit rate, that you see recommended for spoken word. You can't adequately do decent stereo sound in that kind of bitrate, forget multi-channel.

32 kbit/s for speech

Your link doesn't exactly contradict what I said:

From your link:
32 kbit/s - generally acceptable only for speech
96 kbit/s - generally used for speech or low-quality streaming
128 or 160 kbit/s – Standard bitrate quality; difference can sometimes be obvious

We are discussing rates under 96Kbps... So in between "only for speech" and "generally used in speech or low quality streaming".

50-80kbs is no more acceptable for a movie soundtrack than it is for music. It's total garbage in those applications.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Edit: the Nexus 7 has a Micro USB (http://www.google.com/nexus/#/7/specs)
You can get a "Micro USB Flash Drive" for external storage. Google it. Probably even an adaptor to use an SD card if it's specifically an SD card you want.

I googled "Micro USB Flash Drive" and all I found was small flash drives using the standard USB (not Micro) connector.

Second you need to hack the Nexus because it does NOT support USB storage either.

 

[ScifiGeek]

Its not really a hack, you just need permissions to mount the storage device, which only root can. If you have root, you can grab an app off the market for it.

You need to root your device and currently (Nexus forums) it still can't play media off your storage device (one of the main uses for adding storage). So it will require hacking.

 

[ScifiGeek]

The Nexus 7 is a fine tablet and probably most will find what I say a bit crazy, but I think the Blackberry Playbook is still the best 7" tablet on the market *for the money*. Here in Europe, you can snag a *16GB* Playbook for 187 euros, which I assume will undercut the 16GB Nexus 7 by 63 euros--a substantial savings! But it isn't just the savings that puts the Playbook ahead. Playbook OS 2 is a sweet OS, and for what most use a tablet for, it's got all the key apps one could *need* (though certainly not *want*--ahem, cross-platform video chat!)

No SD slots on the Playbook, but For the price of the 16GB Nexus, you get a 32GB Playbook here, and 64GB is available for $50 more.

How does it handle Video playback?

 

[ScifiGeek]

I don't know if it's been said yet, but the ghosting problem people have seen with the screen isn't ghosting. It's image persistence native to IPS displays

I am typing this on my IPS screen with 14000+ hours of usage on it and it has never had any image persistence.