Review: Samsung Nexus 10 (GT-P8110)

The Nexus 10 is a collaboration between Google and Samsung. The tablet was announced in November of 2012. After months and months of trial and error we finally managed to grab a Nexus 10 and now here is our full review. In this review we will determine if the Nexus 10 is indeed one of the best Android tablets on the Market or not.

Introduction

The Nexus 10 is Google’s first 10″ tablet and it’s a stunner! As we get further into the review I will talk about both the hardware and the software of the Nexus 10. During this review we will take a look at the following points of the tablet:
- Hardware and design
- Interface
- Performance
- Camera
- Battery life
- Conclusion

Hardware and design

The Nexus 10 uses plastic as its main build component and the build quality of the tablet is just superb. The Nexus 10 has the most practical 10 inch tablet design ever. Samsung and Google has designed it in a way that a person can easily hold it in one hand and operate it from the other. The weight of the tablet is also evenly distributed. On the back, Samsung uses a rubberized material which makes the Nexus 10 much comfortable to hold and gives the tablet a smooth feel, plus adds a lot of grip. The front of the tablet is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 2 and underneath it a stunning 10.1 is Super PLS display with a resolution of 2560×1600, giving it a pixel density of 300 PPI. Making the Nexus 10 the highest resolution tablet on the market, even higher than Apple’s iPad with Retina Display (264 PPI).

On the front of the Nexus 10 you will find a 1.9 Megapixel front facing camera which is capable of shooting up to 720p HD video and 2 stereo speakers which produce some outstanding results. On the top of the tablet, there is a Power/Lock button and a Volume Rocker. On the left side of the device you will find a MicroUSB port for charging/syncing and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right side of the device you will find a MicroHDMI port. And a Magnetic Pogo pin charger is located on the bottom of the Nexus 10.

The dimensions of the Nexus 10 are 263.9 x 177.6 x 8.9 mm and it weighs 603g. The tablet is available in two storage configurations, 16GB and 32GB. The storage can’t be expanded by using a MicroSD card and there is no 3G/4G connectivity.

 

Interface

The Nexus 10 runs on the latest and greatest from Google, Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Android 4.2 brought a lot of new features, like Multiple user support, Gesture Typing, Notification Settings, Daydream and the amazing Photo Sphere Camera. The stock Android experience really shines on the Nexus 10 as the OS is completely optimized for its high resolution display, so everything looks crisp and clear.

Google did some alterations to it’s Tablet UI in Android 4.2 and made it unified with it’s 7″ Tablet UI and the Phone UI. The traditional navigation bar is at the bottom but the notification center which used to be in the bottom as well has been shifted upwards, like in the Phone UI. I think this was a really nice move by Google as new users can easily adapt to the Tablet UI now.

Performance

The Nexus 10 packs a dual-core (Cortex-A15) Samsung Exynos 5250 processor clocked at 1.7GHz, Quad-Core Mali-T604 GPU and 2GB of RAM. At first, I thought the device would lack on performance due to the tablet only having a dual-core CPU but I was wrong. The Nexus 10 proves that Android really doesn’t need more than 2 cores. I was really pleased with the overall performance of the device.

Multitasking is just excellent on this tablet. I opened 12-15 apps (including 2 memory intensive games) but I got no lag whatsoever. Transitioning between opened apps was really fast and smooth. The gaming experience was really amazing on this super high-res tablet too. Thanks to Project Butter, the UI was fast and responsive. The only problem I had was the launcher redraw issue. Whenever I used to close an app and go back to my home screen the launcher used to redraw, this was very annoying. This issue might get resolved by a software update in the future.

I also ran some benchmarks on the Nexus 10. Below are the results:
Antutu = 13639
Quadrant = 4555
Cf-Bench = (17382, 6637, 10935)

Camera

The Nexus 10 features a 5 Megapixel camera sensor which is capable of shooting 1080p video at 30FPS. The camera isn’t all that great and I have seen much better camera sensors on tablets. Actually, I was a bit disappointed. The Nexus 10 can capture acceptable images in good lighting conditions or with flash but in low light conditions it’s just terrible, a lot of noise in the image. Same goes with video recording as well, the sound quality was good though. Below are some images taken with the Nexus 10:

     

Battery life

The Nexus 10 packs a huge 9000 mAh Lithium polymer battery and it certainly needs the huge battery to power the stunning high-res display. The battery life is really impressive on the Nexus 10, I easily managed to get 7-8 hours of video playback and the standby time on this tablet is just magnificent, even with WiFi turned on the whole time.

Conclusion

Yes, The Nexus 10 is indeed one of the best Android tablets in the market right now. The Nexus 10 features a stunning super high resolution display with an impressive battery life. The tablet packs a lot of raw power and gives an outstanding gaming experience as well. Camera and the lack of expandable storage are the only cons of the Nexus 10. Also, the device will be among the first ones to receive the latest Android updates and at such a low price, it’s a steal!