The Nexus 9 just landed, and it’s hot – both in terms of newness, and temperature. It offers the beefiest specs in the Android world, along with a near doubling of prices over yesteryear’s models – but does the $399 HTC Nexus 9’s cutting-edge components justify its steep price increase?
Competition
In the tablet world, competition in the ~9-inch tablet space burns fierce – manufacturers have saturated the market with with all manner of devices. The vast selection of high-end tablets covers all operating systems, including Android, Windows 8.1 and iOS. The best of these include the $399 Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, the $399 Apple iPad Air and the $499 Air 2. On the low-end of the spectrum lies the ~$240 LG G Pad 8.3 (our G Pad review).
While all of these devices will get the latest flavor of Android – Lollipop – the Nexus 9 is the first to arrive with it pre-installed.
Aesthetic Design
At first glance, the Nexus 9 comes off as a larger version of the 2013 Nexus 7. In build quality, the Nexus 9 looks and feels great – save for the lamentable design of the rear matte plastic case. While it feels solid and easily gripped, the build quality won’t impress. At the bottom of the tablet, near the microUSB charger, the plastic rear shell creaks under light pressure. The center of the back actually gives in when lightly pressed. This doesn’t present a deal-breaking flaw as the structural weakness affects non-critical portions of the tablet; you won’t need to worry too much about crushing a CPU die through semi-rough handling.
The Nexus 9 comes in two colors: Black and white. The model in my possession features a slightly off-black shell, along with a brushed metal bezel. The bezel doubles as a wireless antenna and bolsters grip. The edges of the device slope downward, allowing users to more comfortably hold its edges.
Hardware Design
CPU: NVIDIA Tegra K1 “Denver” dual-core CPU rated at 2.3GHz
GPU: NVIDIA Tegra 192-core Kepler
OS: Android 5.0 Lollipop
Display: 8.9″ IPS LCD 2048×1553 4:3 aspect ratio with Gorilla Glass 3
RAM: 2GB RAM via Micron
Memory: 16GB or 32GB eMMC storage via Samsung, without microSD card support
Wireless: NFC, Bluetooth 4 and 802.11ac. There’s also an LTE model
Dimensions: 7.95mm (thickness) and 425g (weight)
Battery: 6700 mAh, not user-replaceable and no wireless charging
Audio: 2x small, front-facing speakers; 2x microphones
I won’t go too much in detail into the inner-workings of the Nexus 9. Thanks to iFixit’s brilliant teardown of HTC’s tablet we know several things: First, HTC crammed a cutting edge chipset and high-quality screen into the Nexus 9. Second, they cut so many corners on the Nexus 9 that one might expect the tablet to look circular, rather than rectangular.
The 16GB eMMC module, a soldered on flash storage device, is the same used in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, which released over a year ago. The module adheres to the older eMMC 4.5 spec, which specifies bandwidth speeds in the 200MB/s ballpark. Google and HTC ignored the latest in eMMC modules, with speeds approaching that of desktop Solid State Drives (What’s an SSD?). The odd stutter and jitter experienced during disk-intensive operations may be due to the mismatch between the old memory module and the bleeding edge processor. However, reports from the field indicate the stutter comes from a firmware bug.
HTC should have used Samsung’s eMMC 5.0 modules; its omission suggests rampant cost-cutting. The lack of wireless Qi-charging is another indicator. Another design shortcoming: HTC’s decision to use a bare-minimum 2GB of RAM on a 64-bit system. Ideally, 3-4GB of memory should have been used.
Hardware Analysis
The dual-core NVIDIA K1 Denver chipset uses the latest in ARM architecture: the ARMv8-A. ARMv8 offers encryption support, 32 and 64-bit architecture support and overall faster and more energy efficient performance than the previous ARMv7. To date, only Apple’s A7 chip provides similar cutting edge specs.
The decision to wield two big cores, over four smaller cores, paid off – the performance-on-paper of the Nexus 9 eclipses its competitors. The benchmark software AnTuTu rates the Nexus 9 among the highest performing (if not the highest) devices within the Android ecosystem. While some might question HTC’s chipset choice, multithreaded performance in the mobile sphere always comes in second place to single-threaded. Years from now this will change. But into the foreseeable future, faster dual-core processors will dominate slower quad cores in real-world performance.
The Nexus 9’s 2×2 MIMO 802.11ac wireless trumps many tablets on the older wireless-N standard. Even on the 5GHz broadcast spectrum (what’s a dual-band router?) the transmit range isn’t much different than the 2013 Nexus 7. This owes in part to the use of 2 different streams in addition to the mostly plastic construction and the antenna band, which doubles as a bezel. While wireless-AC is faster than the older N standard, most users will be bottlenecked by their own Internet connection.
The main advantage of 802.11ac is that it transmits data faster, at the same power consumption, as the older standard – so in most cases, users will notice a sizable increase in battery life while using the device to either stream media or browse the web. Unfortunately, a firmware bug in Lollipop appears to cause undue battery drain while browsing. Google claimed to fix this issue in the latest firmware update. This update failed on my tablet, unfortunately (but eventually installed itself).
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