The Google Nexus 7 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Brian Klug on July 26, 2012 11:35 AM ESTBattery Life
The Nexus 7 has an integrated 16Wh battery, which despite its size delivers extremely good battery life. Our WiFi browsing test saw the Nexus 7 deliver 9 hours of battery life on a single charge, that's roughly half an hour less than the new iPad.
The Kindle Fire comparison is even more impressive - the Nexus 7 outlasts the Fire in this test by nearly 70%.
Battery life while playing back locally stored video is just as impressive. Here the Nexus 7 clocked in at over 10.5 hours on a single charge, 82% longer than the Kindle Fire. Of course with only 8GB of local storage you're going to be forced to stream a lot of content to the Nexus 7, where it will get worse battery life.
Our 3D gaming battery life test shows how bad things can get on the Nexus 7 if you really stress the SoC and display: 4.08 hours. This is actually the only test where the Kindle Fire does better on battery. Do keep in mind that the Nexus 7 is technically doing more work (higher resolution and frame rate), which contributes to the delta in battery life here.
With 4 hours on the low end and 10.5 hours on the high end there's a pretty wide dynamic range for battery life on the Nexus 7. Keep that in mind because depending on your usage model you may end up closer to the lower end of that spectrum than you'd otherwise think. The big problem is without tons of local storage, you're going to end up relying on WiFi for content streaming needs a lot more than you would otherwise - which does have a tangible impact on battery life.
The Nexus 7 does take a good amount of time to charge its relatively small battery using the supplied 10W (5V, 2A) charger:
You can expect a full charge to take 3.35 hours, and about 3 hours to hit 90%.
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trajik78 - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
my buddy at work just got his Nex7. it's great, but the speaker is REALLY REALLY bad. distorts even at low volume.rfdparker - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I had the same issue. I tried a stereo audio test video from YouTube, and it seemed one of the pair of speakers had already blown on/before arrival, whilst the other was fine.So I'm getting it swapped today.
ImSpartacus - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
If Google had to skimp somewhere, I'm glad they skimped on the speakers.klmccaughey - Wednesday, August 8, 2012 - link
You still need *useable* speakers. If they are so bad you can't hear a thing then that rather detracts from the whole experience.lordsaytor - Friday, September 14, 2012 - link
Well said. It really is a shame. The Nexus 7 is such a fantastic tablet to use. If not for these minor flaws (the speaker, lack of hdmi, lack of expandable memory) this would be a perfect product. It would have taken the gold editor's award easily.But having said that, I can't complain about the $199 price tag and I suppose you get what you pay for.
But being the first ever tablet Google has made, I think things in the 7 inch market looks very promising. Other manufacturers (Apple, Amazon, Samsung) will have no choice but to make an even better tablet for the same price in order to take market share in the 7 inch category.
Johnmcl7 - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
I'm disappointed that micro SD slots seem to be disappearing from high profile Android devices and frustrating reviewers seem to skip over it. I can see why manufacturers want to take micro SD slots off devices but losing the slot is no benefit to consumers and being able to add lots of cheap memory to a device with an HD screen prime for video and games is useful.John
Wiggy McShades - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
I'd imagine google wants to try and sell people cloud storage rather than let them go and buy a micro sd card.mcnabney - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
Which makes no sense on a WiFi-only device.NoNeedForMonkeys - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
My N7 is wifi tethered to my phone when I am mobile.kmmatney - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
Seeing how quickly my son's 8GB iPod touch filled up, I think they could have really used more memory. Web browsing and streaming is OK, but you won't be able to install very many games, or put a full music library on it. It can't be that much more expensive to add another 16 GB.