The Nexus 7 went up for pre-order on Tuesday, and I've been doing the mental math ever since. One hundred ninety-nine dollars for a 7-inch tablet with stock Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, built by Google and ASUS. For comparison: the cheapest iPad is still the iPad 2 at $399, and there's this massive gap in between where nothing exists. Until now.
I've been genuinely skeptical about tablets for the past couple years. They're nice for reading in bed, sure. Good for watching video on a plane. But essential? I never bought one, and I didn't feel like I was missing much. Tablets always seemed like the computing equivalent of a middle child nobody asked for. Not enough power to replace your laptop, not portable enough to replace your phone. Just... there.
The Nexus 7 is making me reconsider that whole assessment, and honestly, it annoys me because I liked being skeptical about tablets. It was a clean position. But Google's managed to build something that doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is. No claims about productivity, no weirdness about trying to be a mini-iPad. Just a tablet. A small one. For $199. With Jelly Bean, which I haven't actually used yet but everyone says is noticeably faster and smoother than Ice Cream Sandwich.
The form factor is what's really getting to me. Seven inches sounds arbitrary until you realize that the original iPad is 9.7 inches, which means holding it one-handed for any length of time requires either gorilla-level grip strength or accepting that you'll drop it on your face. I've borrowed iPads exactly three times. All three times I ended up putting it on my lap or a table. The Nexus 7 is actually designed for human hands. It's pathetic that I find this noteworthy, but here we are.
And honestly, it feels like Google's doing something genuinely smart here instead of just reacting to Apple. The Nexus program has always been about reference devices—here's what Android should be, here's how to do it right. The Nexus S was a perfect phone even though it wasn't the most powerful. The Galaxy Nexus had a gorgeous screen and clean software when other Android phones were drowning in bloatware. Now they're bringing that same philosophy to tablets, except they're also pricing it in a way that actually makes people consider it instead of just looking at the $400 iPad price and thinking "well, I guess I don't need a tablet."
The app ecosystem situation is... not ideal. Android's tablet apps are genuinely worse than iPad apps. Developers have invested heavily in iOS, and Android tablet design is still kind of a afterthought for a lot of studios. That's a real, tangible downside, not something I'm making up. But how many iPad apps do you actually use? Most of what I see people doing on tablets is web browsing, email, maybe reading. You don't need a thousand polished apps for that. You need a device that does the basics without making you want to throw it across the room.
There's also the whole "this is the first Nexus tablet, so the hardware could be a complete disaster" possibility. ASUS hasn't exactly built a stellar reputation for quality (remember the Eee Pad Transformer? Barely anyone does). Google could have cut every corner and still saved $200 compared to Apple. Maybe the screen is dim, maybe the speakers are garbage, maybe the battery dies in five hours. I won't know until reviews drop next week and actual humans start using them.
But here's what's actually bothering me: for the past two years, iPad has been the default answer. Someone asks "should I get a tablet?" and the answer is "get an iPad." Not because it's objectively the best option for everyone, but because there was no real alternative. Tablets cost $400. That was just the law. The Nexus 7 is basically saying: "Actually, no. A tablet can be $199 and still be a competent device."
I'm still not sure I'll order one. I don't have pressing tablet needs. But the fact that I'm even considering it? That's new. That's what the Nexus 7 has actually done. It's not the tablet itself that's revolutionary. It's that it exists, and it's cheap, and it looks like it might not be terrible. Next week when people actually get them, we're going to find out if Google's pricing reality-check sticks around or becomes a forgotten footnote. My money's on it mattering way more than people realize right now.