 Hey, this is Josh from The Verge, and we're taking a look at the Google Nexus 7 tablet. It's an Asus-made, seven-inch, $200 device that is being sold exclusively right now through Google's Play Store. And it's meant to basically be the content consumption tablet device that Google helps will lure people away from things like the Kindle Fire and maybe even the iPad, at least the lower-end iPad 2. It's got a Tegra 3 chipset inside with a gig of RAM, 8 or 16 gigabyte storage options, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS. It has a 1.2 megapixel camera on the front, and it's also got a pretty decent-looking display. It's a 1280 by 800 resolution IPS display, and I have to say the viewing angles are quite good and the text and color reproduction is nice as well. All in all, it is a pretty nice device. For $200, the hardware feels really well-made. It's not too plasticky, not that cheap feeling. It's got a cool, rubbery, soft-touch back that is, kind of feels like leather. It's almost like a cross between leather and rubber in your hands, but it's got a good feeling. It doesn't smudge up too badly, and it generally feels like a nice weight and thickness in your hands. And frankly, I like the seven-inch form factor. I feel like it's a really comfortable size for a tablet. In some ways, it's a lot more comfortable than the iPad, especially for things like reading books or magazines and even doing things like watching movies on a plane. The tablet runs Jelly Bean, which is the newest version of Android. It's Android 4.1. It's the successor to Ice Cream Sandwich, and there aren't a ton of huge new things in Jelly Bean, but they've refined a lot of what was going on in Ice Cream Sandwich. There are some minor graphic changes, nothing that most users will notice from one version to the other. They've done something that they call Project Butter to make scrolling smoother and more consistent on the device. Scrolling definitely feels smooth and consistent on the Nexus 7, though there have been times when I'm scrolling quickly through a list and it kind of snaps back from my scrolling. It's not doing it right now. It just did it right there. It happens very rarely. I think it's because of the increased sensitivity. It's not something most users are going to notice or be bothered by, but it is something that I took note of. App drawer and widget drawer are exactly like what we saw in Ice Cream Sandwich, but there have been significant changes in other places. In particular, notifications are way upgraded. They're using a different font. They're a little bit clearer, a little bit cleaner, and some notifications can be expanded and you can actually take action on them. For instance, you can share an image right from your device to Google Plus or other services right from the notification without having to go into the app. It's a really cool, useful new feature of Jelly Bean, but sometimes you want your notifications to just be collapsed and then you actually need to use a two-finger swipe to collapse them. It would be great if there was an option to, say, keep all of my notifications collapsed unless I otherwise specify, but they have not included that here. Google has also made a really big change to the way it's doing search on Jelly Bean. This goes across all of its devices that will get Jelly Bean. First off, it's got an almost Siri-like voice search functionality now that is a lot smarter about finding the kinds of things that you need to find. Let's give it a whirl here. Sushi restaurants near me. Getting directions. It not only pulls up a sushi restaurant nearby, but it also gives me directions to that restaurant. It's actually got this little countdown timer. If you don't take any action on that item, it'll jump you right into directions. Here you can actually see a taste of the new maps. It has these nice tablet-centric overlays, which are really helpful. The new search service, which Google is calling Google Now, isn't about just competing with Siri. In fact, it does a lot of stuff that Siri doesn't do and can't do. In some ways, it predicts what you're going to do and will give you notifications about that stuff. For instance, if you commute every day, it will know when your commute is happening and will tell you if when you get on your commute there are problems on the road. It'll reroute you and give you different directions to get around that issue. It will also tell you if you're waiting for a train, for instance, if the train has been delayed or when the train is coming. It will tell you whether when you get to a new area and if you're looking at a flight, for instance, I booked a flight. I'm leaving tonight on a red eye. Let's take a quick look at that. Virgin America to New York, flight 30. Virgin America 30 from San Francisco to New York is on time and departs in seven hours 54 minutes. Google says this service learns your habits over time. It's obviously using your search data to compile some of this information. To me, this is really a long-term test. You don't get the sense of what it's going to do in one or two days. For me, especially since I'm not at home and not going through my standard routine right now, I'm not getting an impression of what it'll be like to live with. I think we're going to have more on Google Now as time goes on. It's a very intriguing, very interesting service. It's worth noting that the voice recognition and the voice response in Google Now is really impressive. It sounds better than Siri and it doesn't match Siri's functionality one-to-one, but it definitely gets close in a lot of areas. I'm actually really impressed with it. Google obviously sees the Nexus 7 as a content consumption device and they've beefed up some of their Play offerings in accordance with that. They've added Play magazines so you can now download magazine content. It works pretty well, though I have to say the selection isn't quite up to snuff for me. They don't have Us Weekly, which I took as a real problem. You see here that it actually does some rendering, which when you're flipping through pages quickly, it can sometimes take a little while to render. The offering is very similar to what the Nook does and very similar to what the Fire does. In fact, you can go into a mode here where you can just read the text of an article or a section as you would maybe an e-book, which makes it a bit easier to take in some of this content. I will say, though, in general, the performance in the magazine app feels a lot snappier than both the Fire and the Nook. In terms of a one-to-one comparison, I'd say the Nexus 7 is definitely superior to either of those options. Google's also added TV offerings to its video selection so you can now download or stream an episode of a TV show or an entire season. They've got a new interface for the Play app, which is a little bit easier to navigate. Here's an episode of Falling Skies. I've been meaning to watch this show and the HD playback on the Nexus 7 looks really good. I actually had to download this episode because I was trying to stream it over an LTE connection here in the room and streaming HD did not work out that well for me. We actually had some issues with streaming on the Q as well and I don't know if Google is having trouble with streaming HD content, which would be odd since they make YouTube, but we've definitely seen a few issues here and there. I would recommend if you're planning on taking this thing on the road and you're planning on tethering that you download the content you want at home before you get going. So one of the things that's still a persistent issue for Google tablets, though is a little less pronounced on this device, is the fact that there really aren't a lot of tablet apps for Android right now. And I mean apps that are truly customized for a tablet experience. You've got some that actually seem okay. Something like Pocket, for instance, feels like it's been customized for a tablet, but I did notice some weird errors, for instance, when I change orientation. It is not reformatting the way you would expect it to for a tablet experience. In general, though, it does have a pretty good experience. But then you've got other apps like Twitter that are clearly still just for phones. What I will say is that between a 4.7 inch Galaxy Nexus and a 7 inch Nexus 7, the difference is not that huge. And in fact, Twitter is a pretty passable experience on a 7 inch display. However, when you look at it compared to the iPad Twitter experience, there's no competition. The iPad blows it out of the water. That said, there are some great tablet experiences here. In particular, Google Plus as a tablet experience is excellent. And you can see that Google has really put a lot of time and love into making this a pleasurable experience. There are also some great games like Shadowgun, for instance, that look fantastic and play really well on the Nexus 7. We've tested it for a bunch of different devices, but I have to say it looks really great on the Nexus 7. And because it's been optimized for Tegra, you see a lot of graphic detail that you're not going to see on non-Tegra devices. So one of the other great new aspects of Jelly Bean is that Chrome is now the standard browser. It's out of beta. And as you might expect, the experience is really pretty good. Scrolling is decent. I did notice a little bit of hiccuping, particularly on the Verge, though. We have quite a heavy site. In general, performance is really fast and snappy, and site's loaded pretty quickly. Take a look at the New York Times here. Everybody's favorite site to visit. And you can see here—oh, that's cute, a Nexus 7 ad. But you can see here that it loads really well, scrolling works well, and text renders really nicely and really quickly. Chrome on the Nexus 7 is really great because it actually feels even closer to the desktop experience. You get a proper tab bar, and it just works really well. It feels really natural. And it's a huge improvement. They've just released Chrome for iOS, and we'll have to see side by side which one is the better performer. But my guess is that you've got a much more customized experience on something like the Nexus 7 or the Galaxy Nexus. In all, the Nexus 7 is an incredible tablet for this price point. And in fact, it's a pretty incredible tablet for any price point. The hardware is really nice. It feels good in your hand. The screen looks good. Apps perform in a really snappy way. And Jelly Bean is a really good operating system. Android has truly come into its own from a design standpoint and from a usability standpoint. I think it's a really enjoyable experience. If I had to recommend what $200 tablet you should buy, I honestly would say the Nexus 7 right now. This isn't just a competitor to the Fire. This is a full-featured tablet with a great version of Android on it. And I think huge possibility if developers really start looking at Google tablets and saying we want to do something with this platform. But for the price and the hardware you get, this is a fantastic tablet.