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."
Slashvertisement Alert!! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Slashvertisement Alert!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have evidence that slashdot was paid for this?
If not, this is a product review of a tech toy, which seems perfectly fine for this site.
Believe it or not, it isn't a requirement for all reviews (be they for movies or products) to be entirely negative. When something has much better technical specs at a lower price point, that's something I want to know.
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It's common knowledge that Apple and Microsoft routinely pay for attack postings on Android and Google products. Have you been Scroogled yet?
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interesting, except perhaps for the 'always on hdr camera' can't imagine that being helpful to battery life, or your personal privacy. i presume it uploads the video and audio to asn.su.vog
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I guess you are referencing 'editors' in the dictionary definition sense. Slashdot editor's intentionally pick submissions that link to the least accurate source material, then make sure the summary misstates the linked material. And few posters even bother to read past the headline.
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$200 for a nice tablet is news AND inherently an advertisement.
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It's not a "nice:" tablet, it's a cut-rate excuse to get Tegra 4 in the news. If they had properly outfitted this thing, it would be the same price as the Nexus 7 2013 model (and exactly the same performance, which a shittier screen).
Any tablet that ships in this day-and-age with just 1GB of ram is not "nice." You just try and load more than 4 tabs in your web browser before running out of ram. And while benchmarks don't tend to care about memory capacity, it will certainly make a difference in games (wh
Re:Slashvertisement Alert!! (not) (Score:5, Insightful)
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And by calling it a "slashverdtisement" I don't imply that Slashdot is getting paid in any way, I mean that the summary reads more like an ad than a "news" item for nerds.
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Wow, an ad for a nVidia product posing as a slashdot article... this is, unfortunately, getting more and more common. :(
If stories about new tech devices isn't what belongs on /. then I don't know what is. You should think a bit more before you just blindly react in a knee jerk fashion. Sure, there are a lot of Slashvertistments these days, but this really isn't one of them. News of the next iPad will be posted as well. Stories about the next great CPUs from AMD and Intel will be too. Here, in the spirit of the holidays, I have a present for you. It's called a clue. Take it in the spirit is offered and then you get a
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This is not a new release anymore, just a review of the "updated" to v 4.3 android version... maybe you should be the one to get a clue.
Always-on HDR (Score:5, Informative)
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I suspect what that means is that camera is automatically recording when camera software is running, and you can choose stills or video bits from what it has been recording, while it continues to record. At least that's what would make sense, as such operation does indeed require significant computational power, which appears to be the selling point of the tablet.
It's pretty unlikely that it would be recording when camera software is not running for reasons like battery life and privacy.
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Bold claim. You obviously didn't even read the article. The camera is not always on, it is HDR that is always on when the camera is on...
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Low end SoC's are amazing this year (Score:2)
I got my kids some $59 "iRola" Jelly Bean tablets from nomorerack for Christmas and they're really fantastic for the price, and plenty of machine for kids, and at a price that you can give them to kids. I paid ~$250 for a Nook color a couple years ago and other than the screen quality, these are much better.
Yeah, the LCD viewing angle is old-school but kids don't care - all the games and Netflix work great, and the wireless radios work without complaint. I even snuck some math and foreign language games o
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I got my kids some $59 "iRola" Jelly Bean tablets from nomorerack for Christmas and they're really fantastic for the price, and plenty of machine for kids
Amazing how low you can get the prices when you use children to build gadgets for children.
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If working conditions were that bad in China then people would be committing suicide at factories. Oh wait...
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" Amazing how low you can get the prices when you use children to build gadgets for children."
Got a better job to offer those children which won't be displaced by someone else shopping their business to other children?
Unless the NEED for child labor is removed, it's better than starvation. Note that horrid labor conditions are how all developing countries compete until they can compete by other means. That includes the US.
If you have a (practical) alternative, please share it.
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Starvation?? The planet still produces food surpluses, and some countries (***cough**USA***cough***) throw away 40% of the food they buy at the market/restaurant.
The answer is that you GIVE the food to the children, you economic and moral imbecile. The parent was talking about making gadgets, not tending crops.
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Starvation?? The planet still produces food surpluses, and some countries (***cough**USA***cough***) throw away 40% of the food they buy at the market/restaurant.
The answer is that you GIVE the food to the children, you economic and moral imbecile. The parent was talking about making gadgets, not tending crops.
I'll burn karma to kick down a defence of child labor, thankyouverymuch.
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Amazing how low you can get the prices when you use children to build gadgets for children.
Don't worry - my 10-year-old daughter has both a job and a side business too. I didn't have a job until I was eleven, so she's ahead of me.
evolutionary development. (Score:3)
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like the tiny new laptop chargers from finsix
I googled it for everyone:
How it looks [finsix.com]
How it works [technologyreview.com]
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How it really works [technologyreview.com]
I had to dig down another layer to discover that they were creating an intelligent amplifier that used asymmetric multilevel outphasing. This is surprisingly similar to the new logic going into cruise control systems (see recent slashdot article) but applied to phasing the amplifier instead of an automotive powertrain. This thing should waste a LOT less energy when "idle" as well -- just running the chip and sensor controlling the phase level.
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why have a power brick at all i its so small that it can probably fit inside the laptop itself? that should be these guy's aim, imo.
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I'm guessing you didn't bother to read anything about the product before posting? I consider hitting a $200 price point with nice hardware very worthy of mention. Also of interest is the high quality stylus support implemented without the need for specialized hardware and the first Android tablet from NVIDIA and their manufacturing model of providing reference models for their partners to brand and sell.
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.
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Did you miss the part where it's $200? 1280x720 still provides a good experience for everything a tablet does.
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It does well for on-screen benchmarks, because of the low resolution of 1280x720.
The submitter got the resolution wrong. It's 1280x800, which is actually a quite nice DPI for a 7" device that's only $200.
Re:benchmark (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it makes it look like it's actually sane in the current "more pixels is better" fad. It prioritizes having a good resolution and computational power to match it, rather than huge resolution and no computational power to support it which is the current fad.
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I bought my 768p 15" laptop because I could play more than slideshow games on it. No way I'd buy a currently trendy "lol look at my many pixels" device that doesn't offer any significant advantage while effectively hamstringing my ability to use anything that needs computational power to match the pixel count overkill on those devices.
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i'm saying your choice is wrong because there is nothing better than e-ink for reading books. once you read on a kindle, you dont go to an lcd/oled.
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I bought my 1920x1200 15" laptop because if I wanted to game on it, it's generally easy enough to make a game run at 960x600...which is fast, adequate, and eliminates the normal pitfalls of scaling by being an integer ratio.
And the rest of the time, the fonts are better.
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So, how do you like lugging around 4-5 spare batteries and interrupting your gameplay about once an hour?
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It gets plugged in for gaming. Is electricity scarce where you are?
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Where and when I use my laptop? Yes, it is. That's why I use a laptop instead of desktop in those situations. My desktop is in every way superior to the best laptop you'll find on the market (except maybe pixel density of screens, which is irrelevant for me anyway).
I had a laptop like yours before. I had to lug around two spare batteries at the very least to get to the sweet spot of three to four hours without charging, and having to shut down the machine to swap batteries was a pain in the ass.
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It's funny that you know so much about my laptop. (Except for the fact that, you know, you don't.)
You're a bit over-the-top and flippant. It does nobody any service to be so reactionary.
Good day.
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You've changed the subject twice now without responding to the arguments. I guess I hit a nerve?
Why "always on"? (Score:1, Troll)
Why would anybody want the video camera on this tablet to be "always on"?
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Why would anybody want the video camera on this tablet to be "always on"?
Always on HDR or High Dynamic Range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging
Not the camera
basically it takes images so fast it can snap 2 images at the same time
~Loko
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Why would anybody want the video camera on this tablet to be "always on"?
Always on HDR or High Dynamic Range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging [wikipedia.org]
Not the camera
basically it takes images so fast it can snap 2 images at the same time
~Loko
...at different exposure levels.
Actually, this makes a lot of sense -- if your first exposure is REALLY fast, then you get the underexposed image really quickly, and you can use it as an index to build the overexposed image, and interpolate the desired image data from the difference. This should actually be a faster technique than the traditional sensor feedback exposure metering, as you can take your first image as part of the metering process and preserve the data for later use.
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basically it takes images so fast it can snap 2 images at the same time
You can do it with one image if you've got access to the raw (more than 8-bit depth) data from the camera.
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basically it takes images so fast it can snap 2 images at the same time
You can do it with one image if you've got access to the raw (more than 8-bit depth) data from the camera.
This still isn't going to give you very much to work with. Taking two shots with a given sensor and its limits can give you much better dynamic range by using different settings to begin with. HDR can be ugly, but used within reason it can give you much better photos.
Spam (Score:3)
So many words just because you have no idea what you're talking about...
It's not the camera that is always on. Its the HDR mode that is always on when you use the camera. Reading "always-on HDR camera" and jumping up and down just because you can almost feel the well-known button ("NSA! Spies! They want to see me all day long!!) being pressed is a bit tired now.
Really, it's almost like Spam these days. In the original Mounty Python meaning that coined the phrase (not that /. readers these days would know ab
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The HDR feature is "always on" not the camera itself, in that the camera can snap HDR photos in real-time without the lag of processing the image into HDR ranges right after it's taken.
My guess is they kind of regret having chosen that name...
has anyone used the 'passive stylus'? (Score:3)
There's a promo for what it's supposed to do from nVidia here [nvidia.com]. The short of it is that they're trying to replicate what pressure-sensitive active styluses do without requiring you to actually have a pressure-sensitive stylus. Instead it seems to use some kind of pattern-recognition on the input signatures from the passive stylus to figure out what you're intending to do, and does things like vary stroke width with pressure, or treat the back side of a stylus as an eraser, etc. Cool if it works: if you can replicate a more expensive hardware stylus in software, go ahead. But does it work reliably?
If it's anything like the Nintendo DS touch screen (Score:2)
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Looks nice, but are these styluses, like this and the S Pen, implementing for the Android stylus API?
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I wonder how the stylus compares to the active wacom digitizer in the Galaxy Note?
I'd expect it's not even comparable but nvidia sure seems to be pimping the "DigitalStylus" feature quite a bit.
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Yeah, I'm interested in that too. I own a Galaxy Note, and it's absolutely wonderful for taking notes, scribbling down flow charts, formulas etc, but would be nice to know if there were perhaps even better things coming along.
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I haven't tried it myself but I read the review on Anand's site a month or so ago and they were very impressed with how it worked. NVIDIA's Tegra 4 SOC has a quad-core CPU plus a low-powered fifth core invisible to the OS. Apparently NVIDIA is using some proprietary algorithms on this "stealth core" to handle the stylus processing.
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To you.
You are not everyone else, nor vice versa. Thankfully.
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What kind of bastard is this guy?
The blah-blah-states'-rights-blah-blah kind if I remember them explaining sometime.
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If you are not intelligent enough to understand what it means without hand holding, then there is no hope for you and you are simply a drain on the system.
Tho its against policy, why not read up on the civil war, and what it was really about. Hint: it was NOT about slavery.
Moron.
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What i want is all that matters.
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...to you.
And quite probably only you.
only 1280x720? (Score:2)
Considering that modern smartphones are coming with 1920x1080 resolution on a 5inch LCD, 1280x720 is pathetic on a 7 inch LCD.
Re:only 1280x720? (Score:5, Informative)
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Do they not have eBay or Amazon where you live?
Amazon refuse to ship to my country (Australia) so I'll have to buy it using a US credit card to a freight forwarder.
EBay, although I wont have to pay for the freight forwarder I'd still have to pay shipping and take the risk with dodgy products (or getting damaged in transit).
These aren't alternatives.
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The submitter got the resolution wrong. It's 1280x800, which is actually a quite nice DPI for a 7" device that's only $200.
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?
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None the less, the Tegra Note does have a standout feature in the style that you're asking for: it's the cheapest tablet by far to support a pressure sensitive stylus, and supposedly it works quite well. I've considered one of these (over a Nexus 7-2) for the sake of have a little sketch pad.
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Yes, if a pressure-sensitive stylus is your thing, this is interesting. But I have never missed that (or any stylus at all). I would gladly take it as a feature, but this is just ONE thing of many that people may want besides a screen on the front.
What I was saying is that almost all tablets are of the most generic kind, with everything but the hardware and the price being judged as totally unimportant. Some try to stand out with the fastest specs, others with the cheapest price and that's it. It's as if yo
I don't care about this, but... (Score:2)
I had to come read it to cleanse my palate after glancing at the flute story. JFC, Slashdot!
Cores for concern? (Score:1)
Not that exciting... (Score:2)
I saw the specs for the Tegra Note a while ago and got a bit bored with them because:
1. It's not a Nexus device, so is already behind with its Android version. Now it may be with the many updates to the Nvidia Shield, we might see speedy updates to the Note as well, but until this actually happens, I'll err on the side of caution.
2. I would prefer an 8" display in the same dimensions and weight as a typical 7" tablet (e.g. reduce the bezel width). 7" displays aren't just quite large enough, IMHO.
3. The scre
actually it is quite exciting! (Score:1)