Google Nexus 10 review

Apple blew pretty much any other device, be it tablets or desktop monitors, completely out of the water when the famed Retina display was first introduced to the iPad 3 in early 2012. Since then, it’s been a story of companies competing for the biggest and best screens to date. In fact, it took almost a year for a proper competitor to rear its head, with Google and Samsung teaming up to introduce the Google Nexus 10 to the world.

Coming up to its fourth birthday, the Google Nexus 10 has definitely stood the test of time and still holds its own, even for a tablet launched way back in November 2012. A lot has happened in the time since, we now live in a post-Brexit world and superhero movies are now getting a bit stale, yet the Nexus 10 is still almost as reliable as ever. Even if it has since been superseded by the Nexus 9, thanks to a partnership with HTC and has been removed from the Play Store altogether, it’s still a great purchase if you can pick it up for cheap.

Although you’ll have to shop around to find one, Nexus 10 prices have fallen considerably since launch and if you can find one new you can pick it up for around £200. Otherwise, it could still be worth hunting one down second hand or refurbished if you want to see what Android Lollipop feels like without buying a high-end smartphone or tablet.

We simply can’t do the screen justice here, it’s really quite astoundingly sharp

The Nexus 10 isn’t as lovely to behold as the iPad, but we still like it. Instead of metal, the Nexus 10’s chassis is built entirely from grippy rubber-coated plastic. The black chassis is curvier than the iPad’s, and the bezel around the display is broader as well. At 603g, it’s 49g lighter than the iPad, which makes it very comfortable to hold. We’ve no problems with build quality, and the fact the glass on the front is Corning’s tough, scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass is another big bonus. The Nexus 10 feels like it would survive a drop better than the iPad.

Not as classy as the iPad but better than Samsung’s recent own-brand efforts

It isn’t short on features, either. Around the edges you’ll find Micro HDMI, a 3.5mm headphone output and a Micro USB port. You can only charge the Nexus from scratch with the included charger, but it can be topped up via USB if you leave the charger at home. Wireless connections, meanwhile, can be made via Bluetooth, NFC or dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi. There’s GPS, a 5-megapixel camera with flash on the rear and a 720p webcam on the front. The main camera takes pretty impressive pictures, but composing shots using an unwieldy tablet is never easy. The only thing missing is a memory expansion slot to add to the Nexus’ 16GB (or 32GB) of storage.

With all those pixels to shunt about, you might be worried that the Nexus 10’s dual-core 1.7GHz Cortex-A15 processor wouldn’t be able to cope, but the tablet performed admirably out of the box thanks to its top-end Mali T604 graphics core and 2GB of RAM. Android 4.2 Jelly Bean was smooth and responsive. Critically, all the games we threw at it, from Asphalt 7 to Shadowgun, barely skipped a beat. The only problem is the screen is so good that it’s easy to spot where the developers have taken shortcuts.

However, as Google has released subsequent updates, the Nexus 10 has begun to feel rather sluggish. It will be interesting to see whether Android 5.0’s reportedly lower requirements can speed up things, but right now 4.4 KitKat is a little choppy and nowhere near as smooth as we would like from a flagship tablet. If you want blistering performance, now might be the time to look elsewhere.

The Nexus 10 coped with both local and online 1080p video files, and notwithstanding the slightly below-par contrast, they looked stunning. This makes the Nexus 10 a far better device for mobile video fans than the iPad, given its huge range of available video players and easy drag-and-drop file transfer from a PC – no syncing problems or Dropbox workarounds here.

Incredibly, the display on the Nexus 10 has an even higher pixel density than even the latest iPad. Its 10in screen uses an IPS panel with a resolution of 2,560×1,600, giving a pixel density of 300ppi, some 14 per cent higher than the iPad’s 264ppi. The result is a screen with stunningly crisp graphics and super-sharp text.

It’s also a good-quality screen. We measured its maximum brightness as 436cd/m2 and contrast as 807:1, so brightness is similar to that of the iPad but contrast isn’t quite as high. In our subjective tests, we felt colours weren’t quite as vibrant as on Apple’s tablet, so images didn’t have quite as much punch.

The tablet has recently had an upgrade to Android 5.0 Lollipop. The new operating system provides a fresh visual overhaul and a completely new backend so apps should run quicker. There aren’t a huge number of new features, and even fewer applicable to tablet use, but the new notification system with Google Now style cards is good, as is the settings shortcut menu. You also get a better, tablet-specific layout for Gmail (which now incorporates all your email accounts) and there’s an improved Calendar.

As with all recent Adnroid tablets, the Nexus 10 also supports multiple user accounts – a first for tablet devices and something that’s unlikely to be available on iPad ever. If you live with friends or family, this means you can share the device, with each user having their own email, bookmarks, apps, home screens, settings and preferences.

It’s a brilliant implementation of a feature that’s been well overdue on tablets. Buy one, keep it on your coffee table, and let all the family use it, each member with their own preferences and apps. Adding a second user is easy, you just go to Settings/User and tap the Add User button. The new user then logs in with their Google account, or creates a new account. Once logged in, the tablet appears to be as new, with clear homepages, just the pre-installed apps. They can even adjust settings, such as screen brightness or timeout duration to their own desires.

The new user can install their own apps, though they will need to buy these for their account, so for example, they won’t be able to play games owned by the tablets original user. On the plus side, you will be able to have your own save games and preferences in apps.

If there’s anywhere the Nexus 10 struggles, it’s with complex, picture-heavy web pages. This may sound strange, considering the tablet has enough grunt to play back movies and games with barely a dropped frame, but on the Flickr website and the BBC home page, for example, scrolling and panning lagged and stuttered. It’s not a horrendous problem, but it’s enough to be noticeable.

More serious, though, is the fact that this high-resolution screen saps the battery. When playing our test video on loop at mid brightness, the tablet lasted only 8h 34m, which is almost two hours less than the Nexus 7 and a long way behind the iPad’s 11 hours plus. It’s still enough to watch four films in a row, though.

The slightly below-par battery life, and the fact there’s no 3G (or 4G) version of the Nexus 10, are its only real drawbacks, and it’s hard to argue with the fact the tablet is £80 cheaper than the equivalent iPad. The Nexus 10 really is a bargain, and anyone looking for a good-value alternative to the iPad should be sorely tempted.

The Nexus 10 has an amazing screen and excellent performance, while the stock version of Android is still the best around. Build quality isn’t up there with the iPad, but it does a lot better than the procession of sub-par, flimsy Android tablets currently flooding the marketplace. If you’re after an excellent 10in Android tablet and don’t want to break the bank then the Nexus 10 is a brilliant choice.