NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 Tested, Fastest Android 4.3 Slate Under $200 107
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA officially took the wraps off of its Tegra Note mobile platform a few weeks back. If you're unfamiliar with the Tegra Note, it's a 7", Android-based tablet, powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 4 SoC. The Tegra Note 7 also marks NVIDIA's second foray into the consumer electronics market, with an in-house designed product; NVIDIA's SHIELD Android gaming device was the first out of the gate earlier this year. Though Tegra Note 7 on the surface may appear to be just another 7-inch slate, sporting a 1280X720 display, it does have NVIDIA's proprietary passive stylus technology on board, very good sounding speakers and an always on HDR camera. It's also one of the fastest Android tablets on the market currently, in the benchmarks. Unlike in NVIDIA's SHIELD device, the Tegra 4 SoC is passively cooled in Tegra Note 7 and is crammed into a thin and light 7" tablet form factor. As a result, the SoC can't hit peak frequencies quite as high as the SHIELD (1.8GHz vs. 1.9GHz), but that didn't hold the Tegra Note 7 back very much. In a few of the CPU-centric and system level tests, the Tegra Note 7 finished at or near the head of the pack, and in the graphics benchmarks, its 72-core GeForce GPU competed very well, and often allowed the $199 Tegra Note 7 to outpace much more expensive devices."
benchmark (Score:4, Interesting)
It does well for on-screen benchmarks, because of the low resolution of 1280x720.
For on-screen tests, it will have to process fewer pixels than the more expensive models with high-res screens.
This makes it look faster than it is, as you can see by the off-screen benchmark results.
More, more, more of the same (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently handled a Lenovo Yoga 8 tablet. This thing has paltry specs, but front-facing stereo speakers, an adjustable stand and power and volume buttons you can actually press without looking for them without any risk of pressing them by accident. I was utterly impressed.
Most tablets are just so BORING. There are very few tablets that actually try some new and useful things. Really, being able to put that thing up onto a table and easily adjust the angle so that the camera when using Skype actually shows me and not the ceiling is more useful to me than pushing the benchmarks a little farther out. Why are there so precious few tablets allowing this? Why has even the fine Nexus 7 the power and volume button hidden behind the bezel, all of them in the same shape and close together, so that half of the time you have to first hunt them down and then you still press the wrong one often enough? Why?