Nokia N1 review – too good for the UK?

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.