Nexus 10 review

When Google unleashed the Nexus 7 upon us earlier this summer we were caught completely off-guard. A $200 tablet that was legitimately good in every regard? It was unheard of at the time, and even five months later it's still a really nice slate. Now it has a big brother, the Nexus 10, this time coming courtesy of Samsung. At $399 it arrives with less fanfare and a higher price, but it also comes with a very distinctive selling point: a stratospherically high resolution.

This 10.1-inch panel has an eye-watering 2,560 x 1,600 resolution -- the very same as the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display but in a much smaller package. Is Google's second reference tablet the ultimate Android 10-incher at a bargain price, or is it simply another big tablet with a lot of pixels? Your answer awaits after the break.

1 / 4

Hardware

The Nexus 7, with its rubberized back and chunky profile, always felt very good for a budget tablet -- but mostly it just felt very good. The Nexus 10 feels like a completely different beast, which isn't entirely surprising since it's from a different manufacturer. ASUS got the nod to build the first reference tablet from Google, a development process that required a very close partnership with the manufacturer. Now it's Samsung's turn, continuing the tradition of Google spreading the Nexus love around.

It's a fair partnership, since Samsung has long been the biggest supporter of Android on the tablet front, and of course since Google has long had an affinity for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 -- giving away 5,000 of the things at Google I/O a few years back. We've been wondering when Samsung would release a new stylus-free 10-incher, staying mostly quiet since the underwhelming Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. We're happy to say this one fares better. Mostly better.

It starts with a design that definitely looks like an evolution of the Gal Tab 2 10.1, itself very similar to the controversial Galaxy Tab 10.1N, whose most notable feature was a pair of front-facing speakers. That bit of design language carries on here, grilles embedded into the left and right bezel and extended farther down than before, running through nearly the entire vertical extent of the tablet.

Those speakers are hard to distinguish, though, in what is a sea of very dark materials all blending together into an interestingly rounded shape. Yes, this is still largely a rectangular piece of glass with a mind-boggling number of transistors stuffed in behind it, but the corners have big, lazily rounded profiles. Even the sides are subtly curved, bowing outward to eliminate any straight lines. This makes for a tablet that is incredibly comfortable to hold in any angle or orientation, but it also makes for a tablet that looks even bigger than it is.

It's slightly larger than Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, measuring 10.39 x 6.99 inches across (263.9 x 177.6mm) compared to that tablet's 10.11 x 6.9. But, it's well thinner, just 0.35 inches (8.9mm) vs. 0.38 (9.7mm) for its predecessor. That does make it thicker than the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 (which is 0.33 inches thick). Meanwhile, for those keeping score across ecosystems, that makes for a tablet that's slightly taller (0.8 inches), narrower (0.4 inches) and thinner (0.6mm) than the latest generation iPad. It's lighter, too, at just 1.33 pounds (603 grams) compared to 1.44 (632 grams).

That relative lightness is likely due to the difference in materials, a plastic back dominating the flip-side of this device. It's covered with a soft-touch coating that feels unusually tacky, almost to the point of being sticky. It's nowhere near as nice feeling as the spun aluminum on the TF700 and a definite, and unfortunate, change from the dimpled cover on the back of the Nexus 7 that both looks and feels good. Mind you, a trace of that lineage remains here, a rubberized strip across the top of the back that has the same sort of perforated leather pattern -- just with a slightly tighter dispersal.

That strip is punctuated by the 5-megapixel camera (capable of 1080p recording), which is inset next to its friend the LED flash. If you'd like to see more of these two you can actually remove that plastic strip altogether, which also reveals the tablet's FCC designation and all sorts of other internationally mandated brandings that are, printed here, cunningly and tidily hidden away, leaving the back nearly blemish-free. We wish Google would start mandating such covers to hide garish carrier branding on Android handsets.

On the top edge of the slate you'll find the only two physical controls, a volume rocker and a power/lock button. Travel around the corner to the left and you'll find a micro-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack. On the bottom there's a six-pot pogo pin connector and, on the right, a very welcomed micro-HDMI port for streaming all your legitimately acquired video content to a bigger display. There is, contrary to our expectations, no way to wirelessly stream that video from this tablet, but more on that later in the review.

On the face of the device, again it's those big, beautiful stereo speakers. Inside the upper bezel of the display is a 1.9-megapixel camera (capable of 720p video recording) and, in the bottom bezel, an RGB notification LED. Your proclivity toward such blinkenlights probably directly correlates to the volume of email you receive, but still we're glad to see one here.

And then, of course, there are the juicy bits on the inside. Powering this slate is a 1.7GHz chip of the A15 Eagle variety. That processor architecture is capable of quad-core duties but this particular processor sits in a dual-core configuration. Sitting next to that is a Mali T604 GPU and 2GB of RAM matched with either 16 or 32GB of storage, depending on whether you paid $399 or $499. Neither is expandable.

There are no cellular models just yet, so WiFi will be your only link to the world. As such this slate is reasonably equipped with dual-band and MIMO and HT40 support over b/g/n. (Sorry, 802.11a hold-outs.) You also have GPS, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC on both the front and the rear. So c'mon, go crazy and Beam yourself in either direction. This tablet won't miss a beat.

Display and sound

We'll type it again just because it's kind of neat: 2,560 x 1,600. That's an awful, awful lot of pixels in just a 10.1-inch PLS LCD panel -- way more than a 1080p HDTV contains. That it's in something that comfortably can be carried around, and that can be acquired for under $400, is quite a marvelous feat. It's good to live in the future.

And, indeed, things look fantastically sharp here. Text is rendered incredibly crisply and the UI looks better than ever. The first-party icons are all crisp and clean, though many third-party app icons do look like they could use a new, higher-resolution rendering. Thankfully, the apps themselves overwhelmingly look fine.

Remember when the new iPad shipped and everyone was scrambling to update their apps to support it? There's no need here. The way Android is structured, apps just natively support the higher resolution. We tried dozens of apps, including third-party browsers like Dolphin and lots of different random utilities and games, and we didn't spot a hint of blurry text.

Of course, some feature graphics and assets that could use a higher degree of polish now that they're being consumed at such a preposterous resolution, and those with less than 20/20 vision may be squinting at some occasionally tiny text, but on average it's a big step above the blurry messes that many tablet apps were on the Retina iPad when it first launched. (A state that, we're happy to say, has long since passed thanks to the quick work of all those devs.)

The brightness of the display is fair, though not quite as searingly bright as the 600 nits the Infinity can pump out. Colors are well-rendered and viewing angles are very good, but we were a bit disappointed by the contrast. Blacks were a bit on the murky side, sometimes appearing more purplish, and we couldn't help but notice some distracting light leakage around the lower corners of the display, something we verified on a second Nexus 10.

And we'd also like to point out that this display is protected beneath a sheet of Corning's Gorilla Glass 2. This is a nice change over the Nexus 7, which sheathed in some other type of cover that we've found to be quite prone to easy scratching.

We have some misgivings about the speakers too, but we're happy to say they're among the best we've ever heard on a slate. Where so many other tablet makers relegate the speakers on the back or, at best, the sides facing outward, here they're exactly where they should be: to the left and right of the display and pointing front and center. Their sound is reasonably warm, too, packing a lot of punch for a tablet. But, the most important part of that sentence is "for a tablet." Sound is adequate at best, and you'll want to augment more serious viewing experiences with a set of headphones or external speakers.

Performance and battery life

Again we're talking about a dual-core 1.7GHz A15 processor paired with 2GB of RAM and a Mali T604 GPU. The quantity of RAM is certainly healthy but, when compared to the quad-core 1.7GHz Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 or with Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 10.1, on paper it sounds like no contest. As they say in motorsports, that's why they run the races, and in practice the Nexus 10 feels snappy and responsive. Apps load quickly and are quite responsive and web pages too pop into existence about as quickly as your data connection can suck them down.

Even in 3D gaming the Nexus 10 will hold its own, a result backed by an average GLBenchmark 2.5 score of 33. Unfortunately, we've not run the TF700 through the latest version of GLBenchmark, so we're unable to directly compare, but others online report scores of roughly 15fps from the ASUS tablet. So, if you're looking to do a lot of intense 3D gaming, this could be a much better partner.

The TF700 also managed a higher battery life, nine hours and 25 minutes compared to a relatively paltry 7:26 here. That's on our standard run-down test in which we loop a video on the tablet endlessly while screen brightness is fixed. We figure the blame for this performance must lie largely in the hands of that display, as even the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 did notably better, at 8:56.

Camera

Samsung certainly knows how to make a good imaging sensor -- the Galaxy S II still shines -- so we were cautiously optimistic coming in here despite knowing that the company's tablets have historically had miserable shooters. This one, we're sorry to say, follows in their footsteps. The 5-megapixel camera on the back failed in virtually every case to take a compelling shot. Complex images were too soft and simpler images were often rendered with curious color temperatures that had little to do with reality.

That unfortunately dynamic color handling continues to the video shooting. The tablet is capable of recording at 1080p but, as you can see in the sample video, it's over-active when it comes to choosing a color temperature, constantly cycling from cool to warm. Similarly, the camera exhibits some distracting focus hunting during filming.

Granted, we find photographing or filming anything on any tablet a chore, regardless of sensor quality, so the lack of a good quality shooter here isn't too much of a detraction. But, we figure if you're going to bother putting a camera sensor on a tablet, you might as well throw in a good one.

1 / 12

Software

It's Android 4.2 here, a tenth higher than before but still called Jelly Bean. As such don't expect any life-altering improvements, but there are some nice additions.

Keyboard

There's a new keyboard here, but you probably wouldn't notice it if you didn't know better. You can now swipe your way from one letter to the next to spell out words quickly. The experience isn't as polished or powerful as the third-party alternative, Swype, but it's a nice addition for those keen to keep the stock keyboard.

Additionally, there's a far more comprehensive predictive text mode here that does a better job of figuring out what you're going to say before you've had a chance to tap or swipe it in. It's no SwiftKey, but it makes for a nice addition.

Camera

The camera has received a lot of attention, including a fancy new UI that is very minimalist. The biggest new addition here, though, is a 360 degree photo capture mode called Photo Sphere. An incredibly slick interface guides you through capturing enough pictures to effectively surround yourself, generating floating blue dots that you must hit like targets while the software stitches all the pictures together. That's when everything falls apart.

The resulting spherical images look awful. We took many and not a single one was created that didn't have glaring seams. Even if they were blended perfectly, it'd still be easy to pick out the individual photos. The camera is constantly adjusting exposure for each individual picture, so when they're all blended together some shots are bright, some are murky -- and some are simply a blurry mess. It's a very cool idea that, sadly, is poorly done here, but we're not sure whether to blame the camera or the implementation at this point.

The returning side-to-side panorama mode is a bit better, operating much like Apple's in that you just sweep the tablet from left to right and it does the rest for you. The stitching here is far better than in the Photo Sphere mode, about perfect as far as we can tell, but there's still that same exposure issue, with darker sections of the surroundings actually appearing brighter than those areas that should be light.

Miracast

Miracast is the Wi-Fi Alliance's standard for wireless streaming of video, and its addition to Jelly Bean made us very excited -- Android finally has a response to AirPlay. Imagine our disappointment, then, upon learning that Miracast isn't supported in the Nexus 10, at least not yet. It is there in the Nexus 4, a perplexing state of affairs that Google wasn't able to give us much clarity on, but it does appear that this is not a hardware limitation, since all the communication takes place over WiFi. If Miracast isn't going to be software-enabled in every Android 4.2 device then we're struggling to see how it's actually part of the OS, and we're definitely feeling let down about its potential to improve the platform as a whole.

Other tweaks

There's a new quick settings menu that appears should you drag down from the upper-right side of the bezel. It gives you access to the brightness and things like toggling WiFi, Bluetooth or Airplane Mode. There's also a shortcut to the rest of the settings. If you want the notification bar, you swipe down from the left side of the bezel. It's intuitive enough once you've done it a few times, but as there's no visual indicator at the top of the screen to help the newbies.

Jelly Bean 4.2 also brings support for multiple users -- but that wasn't enabled yet. We're told it's coming on November 13th. In theory it could be a boon for corporate adoption of Android, and it could also make letting your kids use your tablet an awful lot safer. ("Who deleted all my email!") But, we're sadly unable to tell you just how useful that is at this moment.

The competition

At under $400, the Nexus 10 is a compelling package, but despite that display it can't quite muster best-in-class performances across the charts. In fact, other than a relative lack of resolution (1,920 x 1,200 vs. this guy's 2,560 x 1,600) the Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 is, we think, an overall better package. It's thinner, lighter, faster, has a much better camera, offers better battery life (particularly if you opt for the keyboard dock) and, frankly, we'd take the brightness and contrast of that 600 nit, Super IPS+ panel over this one with its extra pixels.

What does ASUS's offering lack? Well, Android 4.2 for one thing, but as we've shown above you're just an aftermarket keyboard app away from getting the best that has to offer right now. And, the Nexus 10 does have a lower starting price of $399 for a 16GB model. The cheapest we were able to find the TF700 currently is $477 -- but that's for 32GB, so it's actually $20 cheaper than the 32GB Nexus 10. Plus, the TF700 offers expandable storage.

There's also the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, which right now is $349 for 16GB (again, user-expandable), so you're saving a little money, but it's bigger, heavier, has a 1,200 x 800 display, offers worse performance and has a similarly poor camera. It does, though, manage better battery life.

And, of course, if you're thinking about crossing the aisle to the iOS side, there is the fourth-gen iPad. That tablet's 2,048 x 1,536 display is lacking a fair few pixels in both dimensions but it more than makes up for it in other regards (namely contrast and saturation), its battery life is far better (over 11 hours on our test) and it of course offers up access to the zillions of tablet-optimized apps in the App Store -- for a starting price of $100 more.

Wrap-up

The Nexus 7 impressed us on nearly every front. What few flaws there were we more than forgave thanks to its bargain-basement price. At $400 to $500, the Nexus 10 is actually on par with many other 10-inch Android competitors -- even a little more expensive than some -- and, with average performance in most areas and sub-par battery life, it's relying on that incredibly high resolution and fresh Android build to set it apart. Sadly, neither is enough to distance this tablet from the competition.

The resolution is indeed quite nice but in many ways, the Super IPS+ panel on the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 is even nicer, and other than that new keyboard there's nothing much in Android 4.2 to get excited about right now. Of course, the true beauty of the Nexus line is that when 4.3 rolls around this slate will be the first to get it, and that is certainly worth something. But is it worth enough to make up for this tablet's other shortcomings?