Nokia N1 review – too good for the UK?

The Nokia N1 tablet has been selling like hot cakes in China and Taiwan, selling out in just four minutes when it was first launched back in January. It seems rather odd, then, that Nokia has yet to bring the N1 to the UK. I had a brief glimpse of it at MWC, but there’s still no news on when, or if, Nokia will bring it to Europe. Still, for those willing to take the risk of buying one through eBay or a grey import seller, Nokia’s gorgeous full metal slate is an absolutely incredible Android tablet, and a serious threat to Apple’s iPad Mini 3.

From the outside, you’d be hard pushed to tell the N1 apart from Apple’s tiny tablet. Both have a 7.9in 2,048×1,536 resolution display housed inside a sturdy aluminium chassis and they each share the same 4:3 aspect ratio. Even the volume and power buttons look almost identical. However, the N1 tips the scales at just 318g, making it a fraction lighter than the iPad Mini 3, and it’s also a marginally slimmer, measuring 6.9mm thick as opposed to 7.5mm. The N1 doesn’t have the iPad Mini 3’s chamfered edges either, opting instead for smoother, rounder corners that sit more comfortably in the hand.

^ Say goodbye to your micro USB cables – the Nokia N1 comes with a reversible USB Type-C port

It’s certainly one of the most attractive tablets I’ve seen, and its overall size strikes the perfect balance between big screen entertainment and portable practicality. It’s great for holding in one hand if you want to read an eBook or surf the web, and it doesn’t take up a huge amount of room in your bag if you want to use it out and about.

Launch Event

The Nokia N1 is no mere iPad Mini clone, though, as its Nokia Z Launcher gives Android 5.0.2 a real breath of fresh air. Instead of having traditional home screens, the Z Launcher presents you with a grid of your 12 most-used apps on a single home page. To launch other apps not included in this list, all you need to do is start scribbling a letter or two onscreen with your finger, and the N1 will then display everything that matches it, including apps, contacts, bookmarks and suggested web searches.

^ To search for apps, all you need to do is draw a letter onscreen

For instance, draw the letter “S” and the grid will display apps for the Google Play Store, Settings, Google Settings and Voice Search followed by other games, apps and contacts starting or containing that particular letter. It recognises both upper and lower case letters with ease, and the chunky white lines left behind by your finger provide excellent visual feedback on what you’ve just written. It also displays your letters as typed text above the grid to give you an even clearer picture of what it’s searching for.

You can add more letters to get more specific results, but with 12 search results displayed, I almost always found exactly what I was looking for with just one letter. However, write too many in quick succession and the tablet will likely confuse your scribbles for another letter altogether. Still, it only takes around a second for it to recognise each letter, so you hardly have to wait long before you can write out another one. Alternatively, swipe in from the left hand side of the screen to view all your apps in alphabetical order.

^ The N1 comes with Nokia’s Z Launcher by default (left), but you can always switch back to stock Android (right) in the Settings menu

Either way, it’s an extremely simple and intuitive way to use and navigate Android, and it really helps the N1 stand out from other Android-based tablets. It takes a little getting used to, but like the current phone version of Z Launcher (which is still in beta at the moment), the tablet will gradually learn which apps you like to use at different times of the day and automatically promote them to the main home screen so you don’t have to search for them. It’s a small touch, but one that makes the tablet feel that much smarter and more practical. However, you can always switch back to the stock Android launcher in the Settings menu if you prefer.

Display

Regardless of which launcher you choose, the N1’s excellent 7.9in 2,048×1,536 display stands head and shoulders above its Apple rival. With a colour accuracy score of 88.8%, the N1 covers a much larger area of the sRGB colour gamut than the iPad Mini 3, resulting in more balanced, natural looking images. The N1 was a little weak on reds and magentas, but colours still looked bright and vibrant, and I much preferred it to the iPad Mini 3’s display when I compared them side by side.

Of course, the N1 isn’t any sharper than the iPad Mini 3, as both tablets share the same pixel density of 324ppi, so text and images all look extremely crisp and well defined. However, the N1’s higher contrast ratio of 1,425:1, which is almost twice as high as the iPad Mini 3, made a huge difference, as images not only looked punchier, but they also had a much more convincing sense of depth, helped in no small part by the tablet’s low black levels of just 0.25cd/m2. The N1 leads on brightness, too, as we measured a peak white level of 413.18cd/m2, making it much easier to see in bright lighting conditions.

Chipset and performance

For power, the N1 uses a quad-core 2.3GHz Intel Atom Z3580 processor and 2GB of RAM. Atom processors have fast become the default chipset for Android tablets in recent months, but the Z3580 is definitely a cut above the rest. While not as fast as the Google Nexus 9‘s Nvidia Tegra K1-64 chip, the N1’s Geekbench 3 scores of 917 and 2,813 in the single and multicore tests put it comfortably ahead of other Atom-based 8in tablets such as the Tesco Hudl 2 and Acer Iconia One 8. Admittedly, the iPad Mini 3 scored higher in the single core test with 1,385, but its multicore score of 2,485 shows the N1 to be the more competent multitasker.

Web browsing performance felt just as snappy, even though its Peacekeeper score of 1,165 isn’t that much higher than the Hudl 2 or Iconia One 8. Scrolling down complex web pages was smooth and stutter was practically non-existent.

The N1 is a competent games tablet, too. While the screen’s high resolution of 2,048×1,536 makes for a pretty low onscreen score of 592 (roughly 9.6fps) frames in GFX Bench GL’s Manhattan test, it fared much better in the offscreen test, which renders at 1,080p. Here, the N1 produced a very respectable 779 frames (around 13fps), which is just behind the iPad Mini 3’s 830 frames. That might not sound very fast, but in practice, demanding games such as Blizzard’s Hearthstone ran beautifully, and we had absolutely no trouble with 2D games like Threes and Alphabear.

Battery and storage

The N1’s appeal doesn’t stop there, as its huge 5,300mAh battery gives it plenty of stamina to get you through the day. With the screen brightness set to 170cd/m2, the N1 lasted a fantastic 10h 47m in the Expert Reviews continuous video playback test, beating the iPad Mini 3 by roughly 90 minutes.

Heavy media users needn’t worry about running out of space either, as the N1 has 32GB of onboard storage. However, it’s worth noting that only 24.3GB of that is actually available to the user and there’s no microSD card slot, so there’s no room for expansion. Still, 32GB should be more than enough for most people, and it’s certainly more spacious than the 16GB entry level iPad Mini 3.

Camera

The only mildly disappointing part of the N1 is its rear 8-megapixel camera. For starters, it only has the very basic Google Camera app to take pictures with, so it’s rather short on additional modes. For instance, the only options you have are the default camera mode, panorama, photo sphere and lens blur, meaning no HDR option here. Likewise, it doesn’t have a flash, so it will struggle in low lighting conditions. Colours were still relatively bright in our indoor test shots, but they were noticeably grainy and there wasn’t a huge amount of detail on show.

This isn’t so much of a problem outdoors, but there’s still obvious signs of noise in large, plain areas of colour, such as dark storm clouds. Colours were also a fraction dingy for my liking, but there was still a decent level of detail present and the sky was well exposed despite the overcast weather conditions.

^ Colours were generally accurate and the sky was well exposed, but shadow areas were rather gloomy

^ Indoors, noise is present throughout, making it hard to pick out areas of fine detail

Conclusion – a grey area

The main problem with the Nokia N1 is trying to get hold of it. While my review sample was provided by Colourful Tech, a new company set up with the specific intent to import N1s to the UK, it’s since had to cease trading for the time being due to ongoing disputes with Nokia. As a result, the main way to buy one right now is to get it via eBay, which currently has plenty of tablets on sale from very reputable sellers for around £210.

A device bought through such channels is usually called a ‘grey import’. This is when products are sold outside their intended market, raising potential tax, duties, warranties and returns problems. Many parts of the world buy most of their tech in this way, but it’s unusual for us in the UK to have to buy from such unofficial sources.

For instance, some grey import sellers don’t include an international warranty with their goods, making it difficult to fix if things go wrong, and you may get hit by VAT and duty costs on receipt if the seller hasn’t already imported the device themselves. As a result, you’ll need to do your research before you contemplate a grey import purchase, reading the seller’s terms and conditions and checking them against ratings websites such as TrustPilot.

This is a shame, as the Nokia N1 is a stunning little Android tablet that absolutely deserves a place on UK shop shelves. While it’s not as good value as the Nexus 9, which has since come down to just £200, the N1 is still an incredible tablet with exceptional build quality and battery life and a novel yet easy to use interface. It’s a much better buy than the iPad Mini 3 and is my new favourite small tablet. Only its quasi-legal status keeps it from winning a Best Buy award, though with a tablet this good I can’t help but still recommend it.