Google Nexus 7

10owners with an opinion

75%of verdicts positive

3/1positive/negative since 2024

6 yrslongest happy owner

1happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use; criticized for performance and reliability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 6 years

The Nexus 7 was way ahead of the competition at the time. It was fast, had a great display and cheap. I used mine for 6 years before it stopped working. Unfortunately google didn’t build on its success.

Doesn’t like itOwned 1 year

I had a nexus 7 tablet that ran like a dream when it was new. Within a year it was unusable slow. That's because google had shipper it with a very low quality SSD. It degraded quickly, resulting in slower and slower speeds. So at least thats one way computers could get slower or keep locking up after some time.

Likes it

You should take a look at this: https://www.uptoplay.net/wordiest-online-game/com.concretero... Very similar in spirit, but IMHO a lot more enjoyable than your version. It's untimed which takes the pressure off, but still a challenge because there are multiple potentially correct answers. The on-line version doesn't seem to be working, and I don't have an android device so I can't tell if the app is still working either. But I ran this on my nexus 7 for years until it died. It was one of my favorite on-line games. I would happily pay someone to port it to ios.

Likes it

I had a nexus 7 as a kid, much before I had a personal laptop or even a phone. Used to utilize almost all of these features that most people seem to consider pointless. Had one of the little OTG cables so I could plug in flash storage and keyboards. I remember unzipping APKs, finding assets and trying to change them and rezipping. Only to find out they wouldn't install. Presumably failing a signature check. Was super cool reading the OP article and finally learning how the thing actually worked with the 5th pin.

Likes it

Back in the day when cameras still took better photos than phones, I've always wanted to backup vacation photos without bringing a computer. I still remember getting so close with the Google Nexus 4 to being able to connect an SD card reader. It supported OTG, but did not have the required charge pump to supply 5V of VBUS. (Supposedly you could hack together something using a 9V battery, some resistors, and a kernel patch, but that was a bit more than I was willing to risk for the convenience.) Finally, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 5 supported it out of the box, and while Android didn't offer a FAT32 implementation back then, there was (is?) a USB host API which let apps supply that instead, and I think somebody actually ended up implementing FAT32 in userspace to make it all work!

Likes it

We own two tablets for businesss use - an iPad and a Google Nexus 7. The iPad 4 is quite heavy, so I mostly use the Nexus 7 for private stuff. - Quickly checking information on the web if all computers are turned off. - Adding listings to our local Craigslist equivalent. This is so much faster if you don't need to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer and then upload the stuff. - Playing games that are made for tablets. - Reading websites for fun while lying in bed. - Showing pictures and funny videos to friends. I prefer the tablet over the smartphone for this because of the screen size.

Doesn’t like it

1) Lag is mostly a thing of the past now, but depends a lot on the hardware. My Nexus 4 rarely lags, whereas my Nexus 7 (2012) lags all the time. Some poorly made apps can also cause lag (Facebook used to be pretty bad). 2) It works fine with Exchange, but is lacking in features. It has, however, received a major overhaul in KitKat, so perhaps it's better now (haven't tried it yet).

Neutral

It's not bad, my Nexus 7 has been an adequate appliance of a walled garden variety, so I don't want or expect a flexible operating system. It comes with all the apps I will ever need from it, such as book reader and browser. I do really hate the google plus nagging I experience every now and then.

Likes it

I have the Nexus 7. Bought it while on vacation thinking that if I didn't like it, I would just give it to my toddler. It turns out I love it and take it with me everywhere. The performance is good, and the form factor is perfect for me. YRMV.

Neutral

This was supposed to be my dream setup too. I got a Raspberry Pi which is gathering dust on the shelf now. I was so eager to use it when it came out, then I had a faulty microSD card and lost all spirit to turn it into a credit card-sized media center. I hope if I can find some spare time, and a working SD card, I'll achieve this goal. I also needed an Android tablet a couple months ago, because I didn't want to miss the tablet side of the Android. (There are not many tablet exclusive apps, but I'm way too obsessive to miss them.) But unfortunately I couldn't spare too much money and ended up with a 8 GB Nexus 7. I wanted it to replace all my laptop needs -I haven't had a laptop for many years, after my last one died and got a desktop which I still love- but without a hardware keyboard and a big enough display, it's only great for reading anywhere. (Which I also don't, I'm too busy most of the time, and at the other times plain lazy.) I hope Android ecosystem will mature even more in the near future. Look, Ubuntu is installable on the Nexus 7 right now. (I haven't done this yet, you can see the pattern here.) That basically means almost everything you can do on Linux, you can do it on your tablet too. And if you can support it with something with more horse-power than Raspberry Pi, you can call it a thin client/fat server pair. The only thing left is to have a good tablet that can run Linux, has a big enough display, and has keyboard accesories. I personally don't like Micros

Likes itHasn’t owned it

I haven't seen a Nexus 7 personally, but from my experience with the Kindle, it looks like it will be a better and more flexible device (I appreciate the Play store and other benefits of stock Android). Not that the Kindle Fire would be a bad choice, but I'd personally choose a Nexus 7.