Google Nexus 10

Google's Nexus 10 tablet ($399/16GB, $499/32GB) is nearly perfect on paper, with the highest-resolution screen in the business, a fast processor, the very latest version of Android, and an elegant design. But it's not as good in practice. During testing, I ended up frustrated by bugs, slower-than-expected performance, and a lack of third-party apps which use the hardware well.?Our Editors' Choice for large tablets is the fourth-generation Apple iPad, but even if Apple products make you cringe like a vampire faced with garlic, the Nexus 10 isn't the best non-Apple tablet.

Physical Features and Battery Life
Made by Samsung, the company that brought us the excellent Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, the Nexus 10 is certainly a handsome tablet. It feels like a premium quality device for its $399 entry price. It's an all-black tablet with a glossy front and a comfortable soft-touch back. At 10.4 by 7 by .35 inches (HWD) it's a little narrower than the fourth-generation Apple iPad, and at 21.3 ounces it's a hair lighter. It's very similar in size and shape to the Asus Transformer Pad TF700 .

The 300 ppi, 2,560-by-1,600 screen is the sharpest tablet screen out there, even besting the iPad's 2,048-by-1,536 Retina Display. Although as we'll see below, third-party apps often make very poor use of it. It's bracketed by two large, well-spaced stereo speakers, along with a 1-megapixel camera, which is placed to encourage you to use this tablet primarily in landscape mode. The microUSB and headphone jacks are on the left side when you hold the tablet in landscape, and the microHDMI jack is on the right. The volume rocker and Power button, which are easy to find with your fingers, are on the top panel. There's a docking port on the bottom that can also charge the tablet, but at the moment, there are no docks available for it.

These super-high-resolution tablets typically suffer in the battery life department. I got 5 hours, 9 minutes of video playback with the Nexus 10 switched to full screen brightness. This result fell short of the 5 hours, 36 minutes the fourth-generation Apple iPad scored on the same test, and far short of the 7 hours, 17 minutes turned in by the Asus TF700, with its 1,920-by-1,200 screen. Expect battery life to almost double if you reduce the brightness to half.

The tablet has Wi-Fi 802.11n built in, along with Bluetooth 4.0 for audio devices, mice, keyboards and file transfers, and NFC. The device supports Google Wallet via NFC, although given its size, you're probably not going to whip it out at a store and use it to pay for something.

Android and Nexus
The primary advantage of a Nexus-branded device is that it should be the first tablet to receive new versions of the Android OS. That's been the case with all Nexus devices that aren't locked to U.S. service providers, and as a Wi-Fi-only tablet, the Nexus 10 won't have any carrier interference.

We have a full review of Android 4.1 and a rundown of the new features in Android 4.2, which you should read if you're interested in this tablet. Of our other two top Android tablets, the Asus TF700 currently runs Android 4.1; the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is getting an upgrade to 4.1 very soon. We haven't heard about when 4.2 will come to either tablet.

That's okay, though. Android 4.1 was a major upgrade which smoothed out many performance issues and introduced "Google Now," a very cool virtual assistant function. Like many Android features, though, Voice search and Google Now are better on handheld, portable devices than on larger ones. Voice control is more necessary on devices with tiny keyboards, and Google Now's cards focus on information you need when you're on the go.

Android 4.2 is a grab bag of new features, including a 360-degree photo panorama mode, Qualcomm's Miracast Wi-Fi display system, built-in malware scanning, and an improved notification center. They're all useful, but none of them are dealmakers.

The most important feature in Android 4.2, multiuser support, wasn't available on my test tablet, and will be delivered as a software update in the coming days. According to Google, different users will be able to log in and see different home screens, apps, email, photos, and storage. Another attractive feature, lock screen widgets, will display useful information on your lock screen like Windows Phone 8 devices do; that will also come in that update.

(Next Page: Performance and Apps)

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