Nvidia Tegra Note 7 Review

[TheElt]

**This is a 2000+ word review with a fair few pictures, you have been warned**

Design – 7/10

Features – 7/10

Performance – 9/10

Value – 10/10

Overall – 8/10

Good – Amazing value for money, great speakers, great performance, good screen.

Bad – Plastic scratches easily, no full HD display, cameras aren’t very good.

 

 

Table of Contents

1 – First words

2 – Specs

3 – Design & Construction

4 – Screen & Stylus

5 – Performance & Battery life

6 – OS & Camera

7 – Conclusion and final verdict

 

1 - First Words

Nvidia’s Tegra Note 7 seems like an impressive tablet on paper, boasting strong specifications for a low price, but nothing this cheap is without drawbacks, right? After a solid year and a bit of solid use and abuse, this £130 tablet has surprised in more ways than you would expect.

 

2 - Specs

For a small 7’’ tablet it boasts impressive specs. At it’s core is Nvidia’s Tegra 4 chipset, which features a 1.8GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB of DDR3L RAM running at 1600MHz, 72 GeForce graphics cores clocked at 672MHz, and 16GB of internal eMMC memory. Couple all this with a 7’’ 1280x800 IPS display and you’ve got the recipe for a strong but portable gaming tablet capable of tearing up anything you can throw at it.

Something interesting to note is the reduced clock speed of the Tegra 4 in this device, as the same chip in the Nvidia Shield comes clocked at 1.9GHz, but this is because the Shield does have active cooling whereas our Tegra Note does not.

There’s also support for MicroSD HC cards of up to 32GB, a definite feature that will be important to many people and also provides a means of extending your storage as you will probably find that 16GB of internal storage getting used up fairly quickly when you start to install some games on there. Some models do also come with LTE support but that is only available in the US.

 

3 - Design and Construction

The system features a full plastic body, with a unique style at the back that uses a more rubbery feeling dimpled plastic taking up most of the space, along with decorative lines of glossy plastic marking a border to the matt finished plastic that makes up the rest of the design. The last outstanding feature on the rear of the device is the camera, which has a nice metal ring around the covering glass.

Moving around to the front of the device we get a glimpse of the screen. The glass used is not finished in any way so it is very reflective, making things like using the device outside on a sunny day fairly difficult, even with the brightness turned all the way up, nothing really special going on here. However, flanking that big glass display is one of the features of this tablet you’ll love. The two front facing speakers on this device are brilliant, full stereo sound is supported and they do go fairly loud, distortion at full volume is minimal and only really evident in some songs. The lows can really be heard better than most devices, especially with the addition of a bass reflex port on the bottom of the device, and the highs and mids don’t get drowned out very much. Just below the top speaker we find the front facing camera and light sensor, not really much to shout on about here but the addition of a front facing camera is a nice addition

Moving around to the top of the device we find some un-common I/O. In the middle is the Micro USB port that supports charging up to 2.1A as well as support for USB OTG, a feature that I did find useful for long trips and those games that work better with a controller. To the right of that we find something interesting, a Mini HDMI port, plug the device into your TV or monitor and you’ll be fed a 1280x800 clone of the tablet display. Whilst I have found this feature useful for watching streams at night or even the occasional movie, it has it’s fair share of drawbacks; There’s no option to change the output resolution, it decreases battery life slightly and it does heat up the device more than you would expect, but not uncomfortably so (But let’s face it, if you have your tablet plugged into your TV it’s not going to be in your hands much). A little bit more to the right of that we find the 3.5mm headphone jack that will use the microphone built into the connected headphones but does not seem to support the little controls they have built into them. And at the very edge of the device we find the lock button, however the positioning of this could be better as sometimes your finger does slip and your finger wipes over the camera lens, getting it a little dirty. The overall layout of the ports on the top of the device are fairly good, you can comfortably hold the device in a landscape orientation without the headphone jack getting in the way of your hands, but with all ports populated it gets difficult to hold and use without laying it down on a table or something.

On the right side of the device is the volume rocker, and below that the exposed MicroSD slot. Personally I would have preferred this to be covered, even by one of those flimsy tabs, as it does pick up quite a bit of dust and grime from hands and where it rests but all in all it’s a nice feature to have. On the left side of the device we find the slot for the optional cover, I tried to get one of these in the UK but wasn’t able to so I can’t comment on that. Finally at the bottom we find the bass reflex port for the left speaker which does make a noticeable sound difference.

The overall construction of the device is very solid and certainly doesn’t feel cheap, however it is very soft and picks up scratches very easily, but with a case this isn’t really an issue at all. The device does not flex very much under pressure but there are some light creeks here and there, but nothing noticeable during regular use.

 

4 - Screen and Stylus

The screen is average, not bad but not great either. The resolution is the same as the Nvidia Shield, however with the increase in size the PPI has dropped to 216. At normal viewing distance this lower resolution really isn’t noticeable, but it makes you wonder why they didn’t go for a 1080p display instead which would only increase the price a little. The colour reproduction is good and the maximum brightness is good as well. Again, nothing bad here but nothing to shout about either.

The stylus on this device isn’t really that great from my experience, when I first got the device everything was working fine but the palm rejection barely worked, some updates did fix this but I wouldn’t rely on it, but considering there is no digitizer present in the device it works better than you would expect. The pressure sensitivity is alright, but you end up just turning the pen for thicker lines rather than pushing down harder which really doesn’t do much. There is a dock for the stylus in the side of the device that is a nice addition, which also has a built in sensor to detect if the stylus is docked or in use, which does change some things within the OS. However after a few drops the sensor broke and constantly detects the stylus as being out even when it is actually docked in the device, this is a little annoying but it’s tolerable. You’re not going to be doing any professional drawing on this tablet, but it’ll do the job of note taking well, especially with the included app.

5 - Performance and Bettery Life

As you would expect with the impressive specs packed into this tablet, it flies (Not literally, that’d just be weird). Even with the device set to “Power Saver” mode, where 2 of the cores are disabled and the framerate of apps is limited to 30, it’ll power through any game you can throw at it. All of the Grand Theft Auto series available on Android are playable with the settings cranked all the way up, and lighter games barely taxing the device. In the AnTuTu benchmark the device scored at just under 35,000, putting it up there with some of the most powerful devices around. In 3DMark’s Ice Storm and Ice Storm Extreme tests, the device danced through them, maxing the tests out according to the program. In the Ice Storm Unlimited test a score of just over 16,000 was achieved, again ranking it amongst the top devices. Impressive, considering the low price tag. During these tests and prolonged gaming sessions the device did heat up quite a bit, the spot directly under the processor getting the hottest, but not painfully so. However, Nvidia made a great design choice here, with the internal positioning of that Tegra 4, it stays as far away from your hand as possible, meaning that even under full load from benchmarking, the areas of the device that your hands actually touch only get slightly warm, meaning that extended gaming sessions are extremely possible.

The battery life isn’t really great. Under my use which is watching a Twitch stream at source quality, with the brightness at 25% the device lasted about 6/7 hours, not really amazing considering it does have a 4100mAh battery. Under gaming loads with the same brightness you can expect a good 2/3 hours run time from a full charge which isn’t too bad. But one thing to note, if you’re planning on a long gaming session with a controller, breaks will be needed, this tablet does not support charging via a “Y” OTG cable, power will only be supplied to the connected device, not the tablet.

 

6 - OS and Camera

Luckily Nvidia provides a mostly stock Android experience, with only a few of their apps and changes added. Updates are usually available a few days after the stock versions are released which is nice to know Nvidia are still rolling out patches for this device even though it’s been replaced by the Shield Tablet. Android is quick and snappy, with applications loading fairly quickly, but that’s to be expected when there’s the power of that Tegra 4 available. Slowdown is noticeable when lots of Chrome tabs are open, or a particularly demanding game is being ran due to the fact that this device is ultimately crippled by its 1GB of RAM, but as long as you close background apps and keep the internet tabs to a reasonable level, you’ll never find yourself using the full 1GB.

 

The camera is ultimately the biggest shortcoming of the device. The rear camera is 5MP with Autofocus and real-time HDR thanks to the 5^th low power processor that is part of the Tegra 4. Even with HDR enabled the images don’t come out that great, you need to be in a well-lit environment for the image to look good at all, the shutter time is horribly long and it’s just not a pleasant experience, really the camera only does well if you’re taking pictures in direct sunlight of things also in direct sunlight. Oh but wait, it gets even worse when we flip the device over and take a look at that front facing camera. Here we find a 0.3MP sensor capable of 480p video, now some of you will be thinking “But that sounds alright for a front facing camera”, and whilst on paper it doesn’t seem too bad, in reality it’s utter garbage. Even with HDR enabled the image quality is terrible and the light levels make well lit rooms look like a basement lit with a single tea light. Unless you’ve got a light pointed at your face then barely anything will be visible.

7 - Conclusion and Final Verdict

Overall the Tegra Note 7 is a great tablet for people that want strong performance at a low price and are willing to make some sacrifices to get it. This is for all intents and purposes, a gamer’s tablet. The stylus is not good enough for the device to be used for any serious art, the cameras aren’t good enough for anything other than the odd picture where quality isn’t a concern and the microphone is woeful.

 

With its low price point you can’t expect to get everything, but with the Tegra Note, Nvidia have come damn close to a winning formula.

[Jambls]

Good review. I love the k'nex (is that how you spell it) stand. I can't afford it but it looks cool.

Also welcome to the forum.

[Dicoray]

Great review, I gave mine to my wife after I got the Shield tablet and she loves it.

[TheElt]

Good review. I love the k'nex (is that how you spell it) stand. I can't afford it but it looks cool.

Also welcome to the forum.

Thanks, don't have the money for a good stand so I had to make do.

And thanks again!

 

Great review, I gave mine to my wife after I got the Shield tablet and she loves it.

Thanks! How's the Shield Tablet holding up? Looks like an impressive device on paper

[Dicoray]

Thanks, don't have the money for a good stand so I had to make do.

And thanks again!

 

Thanks! How's the Shield Tablet holding up? Looks like an impressive device on paper

It is excellent, the pretty much everything is better than the tegra note 7. There is only one downside that I can think of and that is that to use some of the features you have to have a geforce gtx 750 or higher and a good router

[TheElt]

It is excellent, the pretty much everything is better than the tegra note 7. There is only one downside that I can think of and that is that to use some of the features you have to have a geforce gtx 750 or higher and a good router

See, I would go for it but I don't really find the massive increase in power to be at all useful outside of benchmarks and the exclusives like Half Life 2 and Portal. And whilst I'd love to see more Valve titles getting ported over to Android I just don't see it happening any time soon sadly

[Dicoray]

See, I would go for it but I don't really find the massive increase in power to be at all useful outside of benchmarks and the exclusives like Half Life 2 and Portal. And whilst I'd love to see more Valve titles getting ported over to Android I just don't see it happening any time soon sadly

I got one because of the gamestream feature. It was cheaper than building a MITX system for under my tv to play games on.

[TheElt]

I got one because of the gamestream feature. It was cheaper than building a MITX system for under my tv to play games on.

Yeah, but as you said then you gotta have the hardware for it to work. But it does have some features that would have been nice on the Tegra Note like console mode

[Dicoray]

Yeah, but as you said then you gotta have the hardware for it to work. But it does have some features that would have been nice on the Tegra Note like console mode

What I was saying was that I already had the hardware and it was cheaper to buy the tablet than build a new pc for living room gaming

[TheElt]

What I was saying was that I already had the hardware and it was cheaper to buy the tablet than build a new pc for living room gaming

Well, in that case yeah getting the Tablet was a no-brainer.

[Dicoray]

Well, in that case yeah getting the Tablet was a no-brainer.

Sorry I was unclear

[MaxBeast4Z]

this is a pretty solid tablet and a good decent processor