NVIDIA has recently surprised us by unveiling its very own tablet with Tegra 4 inside. Finding a good tablet is nothing difficult nowadays but finding an affordable one with good specs can be difficult. Google’s Nexus 7 has been doing a good job as a $200 tablet so far but now NVIDIA is ready to compete with the $200 tablet with its Tegra Note 7. We saw Tegra 4 in a handheld gaming console called “Shield” before but now it’s time to see how NVIDIA presented the Tegra 4 in its own device.
Hardware
The Tegra Note 7 doesn’t look attractive comparing to the Google Nexus 7. The front looks too plain while the back looks busy because of its three-segmented look. There are total 6 open places, microSD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-HDMI port, micro-USB port, a holder for optional smart cover and the stylus holder. The colors look washed out when you compare it with the sharp display of Google’s 7-inch tablet.
7-inch tablets are currently ruling the market and NVIDIA is now ready to be a part of this market with its 7-inch Tegra Note 7 that features 1280×800 IPS LCD Display. The tablet includes a quad-core Tegra 4 chipset as mentioned before blocked at a single core clock of 1.8GHz. The tablet took advantage of the latest NVIDIA tech called DirectStylus and comes with a Stylus unlike the Google Nexus 7. Moreover, the tablet weighs 320g which is huge comparing to other 7-inch tablets. The Tegra Note 7 is wider and thicker than the Nexus and is heavy too. However, NVIDIA wanted to focus more on the gaming part so let’s see if they managed to do so by making it less elegant or not.
Software
The NVIDIA tablet comes with Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2 out-of-the-box and also promises to release Android 4.3 update next month. When users take out the Stylus, they will see two new apps, a drawing app or a note-taking app. The best part of this stylus mode is its human touch disabling feature. You can disable human touch when drawing so that your touch doesn’t ruin your drawings.
The tablet is also preloaded with apps from the maker itself and a special camera app aside from the Stylus apps. The Google KitKat update (4.4) is also on the way so its great news for Android lovers as lots of existing Android devices won’t receive a KitKat upgrade. Other notable features are 5-megapixel rear camera, 0.3 megapixel front camera, 1080p video capture support, 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage.
Performance
As mentioned earlier, NVIDIA tried to focus more on the gaming part and it really shows when you spend some time with the Tegra Note 7. The high-end Tegra 4 chip with 1.8GHz Cortex-A15 cores manage to handle apps and games faster than the Nexus 7. You will notice the difference when loading apps and performing your usual tasks. Its battery life is also not bad. You can expect to play games for 4-5 hours, watch standard videos for minimum 9 hours and expect to pass 2-3 days without charging if you don’t use your tablet every now and then.
The stereo speakers on top of the device works perfectly when watching movies or playing games. It’s not good enough to give better performance in noisy environments but there are always headphones to help you in such places.
Overall, if you are looking for a good tablet to play games or if you look at the device hardware-wise, it’s good. If you are ready to overlook the cheap build quality, you can give the Tegra Note 7 a try.
