Nexus 10 - Ultra-High Resolution (Part 2)

Screen and sound

We will type it again just because it's so great: 2,560x1,600. That has a lot of pixels in a 10.1-inch IPS LCD screen – that is much more than a 1080p HDTV contains. It lies in something that comfortably can be carried, and that can be purchased for under $400 is quite a great achievement. It's really good to live in the future.

And indeed, everything looks amazingly sharp here. Text is presented incredibly in a lively way and the UI looks more beautiful than ever. The icons are clear and neat, although many third party apps icons look like they could use a higher resolution rendering. Fortunately, the apps themselves look very nice.

The colors are well-rendered and the viewing angles are very good.

Remember when the new iPad appeared and everyone struggled for updating their apps to support it? It is not necessary here. Android is structured in such a way, in which the apps just naturally support the higher resolution. We tried dozens of applications, including third-party browsers such as Dolphin and many different random utilities and games, and we did not determine any signs of the blurry text.

Of course, some graphics and assets are be able to use a higher level of sophistication as they are consumed in an unreasonable resolution, and those eye sights are less than 20/20 may squint at some occasionally small texts, but it is considered as a big step over the chaotic blurred stuff that many apps were on the Retina iPad when it was first launched.

The brightness of the screen is quite good, though not equal to 600 nits that Infinity can create. The colors are well-rendered and the viewing angles are very good, but we were a bit disappointed by the contrast. Blacks were slightly darker and sometimes looked more purplish, and we could not avoid seeing some distracting light leakage around the lower corners of the screen, something that we confirmed on the second Nexus 10.

And we also want to point out that this screen is protected under a glass sheet of Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2. This is a good change compared to the Nexus 7, which is encased in other sort of shell that we found that it was quite easily scratched.

We also have some doubts about the speakers, but we're pleased to say they belong to the best we've ever heard on a tablet. While many other tablet manufacturers move the speakers on the back or at least the outward-facing sides, here they are located where they should be: on the left and right of the screen and pointing front and center. The sound is pretty warm, packing a lot of power for a tablet. But, the most important part of that sentence is "for a tablet." Sound matches each other, and you will want to enhance more serious viewing experiences with a set of headphones or external speakers.

Performance and battery life

Again we are talking about a dual-core 1.7GHz A15 processor combined with 2GB of RAM and a Mali T604 GPU. Certainly, the volume of RAM is quite good, but when compared with the quad-core 1.7GHz Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 or with Samsung's recent Galaxy Note 10.1, in theory, there seems to be no competition. As they used to say in motorcycle racing, that's why they run the race, and in fact, the Nexus 10 feels fast. Applications load quickly and the websites appear as fast as your data connection can allow.

Nexus 10 ($399)                                

·         Quadrant:  4,551  

·         Vellamo:    1,605  

·         AnTuTu:    8,731  

·         SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,371        

·         GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt Offscreen (fps): 33     

·         CF-Bench: 9,772 

Nexus 10

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 ($499)

·         Quadrant: 4,685  

·         Vellamo: 1,475     

·         AnTuTu: 12,027               

·         SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 2,012        

·         GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt Offscreen (fps): n/a (test run with 2.1)           

·         CF-Bench: 7,874 

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700

ASUS Transformer Prime ($499)

·         Quadrant: 4,137  

·         Vellamo: 1,418     

·         AnTuTu: 10,269   

·         SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,861        

·         GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt Offscreen (fps)            : n/a    

·         CF-Bench: 11,861           

ASUS Transformer Prime

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

·         Quadrant: 5,695

·         Vellamo: 2,395

·         AnTuTu: 11,962

·         SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms): 1,193

·         GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt Offscreen (fps): n/a

·         CF-Bench: 13,157

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1

(SunSpider: lower scores are better)

Even in 3D gaming, the Nexus 10 still has its own position, a result supported by an average score of 33 in the GLBenchmark 2.5 test. Unfortunately, we did not run the TF700 through the latest version of GLBenchmark, so we could not compare directly, but others said about scores of 15fps from the Asus tablet. So, if you are looking for the way to play heavy 3D gaming, this could be a better partner.

The TF700 has a higher battery life, 9 hours and 25 minutes compared to 7 hours and 26 minutes that is relatively little here. That's on the standard test in which we constantly kept looping a video on the tablet while the screen brightness is fixed. We found that the responsibility for this performance lies mainly in the screen, because even the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 also significantly did better, with 8 hours and 56 minutes.

Camera

The 5MP rear camera was unable to mange to capture compelling images in almost all cases.

Of course, Samsung knows how to create a good imaging sensor - the Galaxy S II is still shining - so we are cautiously optimistic here despite knowing that the company's tablets have historically poor-quality cameras. We are very sorry to say this computer follows in their footsteps. The 5MP rear camera was unable to mange to capture compelling images in almost all cases. The complicated images were too light- colored and the simple images were often shown with the unusual color temperatures that were less associated with reality.

Unfortunately, that dynamic color processing continues to arrive at the video recording aspect. The tablet has the ability to record 1080p, but as you can see in the sample video, it is too aggressive when selecting a color temperature, constantly moving from cold to warm. Similarly, the camera showed some distracting focus during recording.

Admittedly, we found that photographing or filming anything on any tablets cause tiredness, regardless of the quality of the sensor, so the lack of a good quality camera is not a major minus point here. But we realized that if you are worried about having a camera sensor on a tablet, you might have a good one, too.