I want a new Nexus 7, again!

Some companies just know what they’re doing. Have you ever faced a situation where a product is just such a no-brainer, which you have to have it even if you don’t need it? The reason why I mention the word need is because if it’s a product you need, then it’s really tough to call it a no-brainer. Need is something easy to serve for a customer. If you’re in college and there’s a specific book you need for a class, you could say the product has a guaranteed market regardless of what it is. Desire is a very different ball game.

For a product to be desirable, surely it has to satisfy a need, but it really has to satisfy it so well, that you completely ignore reasoning about it. When products go on sale, you could say this becomes more evident. I know people who buy clothing that they don’t really need, just because it’s 50% off.

I’m not a compulsive buyer, and especially not when it comes to technology. Technology is rarely ever inexpensive, and even though it makes your life easier in certain cases, you don’t necessarily need it to survive. Surely to communicate at a distance, a phone is necessary, but notice, I said phone, not smartphone. For there to be a product that is so well placed and so well oriented, that I don’t feel a burden to cough a couple of hundred bucks to buy it, it has to be awesome, and ironically, that’s only happened to me once, or I guess twice after today.

Google’s first-generation Nexus 7 is really the first and only product that has ever driven me to buy a gadget compulsively. What was there not to love about this tablet when it was announced last year? It ran high-end specs, was small and portable, and that price tag was just too hard to resist after I had just spent almost $ 800 on an iPad. I was seriously tired of three generations of iPads, and I wanted an Android tablet that I would truly love. I lost sleep, and compulsively ordered the Nexus 7 just minutes after pre-orders began.

The announcement of this new Nexus 7 has not been as compulsive for me, but I still want one again. Yesterday I was still debating this, because even though I like my current-generation Nexus 7, the display and the Tegra 3 processor are both a true disappointment. Still, for the $ 250 that I paid for the 16GB variant, I was willing to forgive Google, and simply use it for what it could do well. I honestly considered that if this new tablet wasn’t significantly better than last-year’s model, the best thing was to stick with the old one for an extra year, but as it turns out, the changes are significant.

I’m sure many of you are still debating whether to upgrade, stay, or look for the old one on eBay, so here are the reasons why I’m upgrading:

It’s what the Nexus 7 should’ve always been

For a tablet to be great, the display has to be great. What else is there to interact with the tablet, than the display? Surely the old Nexus 7 was extremely affordable, but I would’ve preferred to pay more for it, than to use that display. The new Nexus 7 doesn’t only bring one of the highest pixel densities of any tablet, but reports have it that the quality of the display is superior. I won’t deny that I will wait for our review unit to land on our labs to confirm that before I hit the “buy button”, but other than that, I’m sold.

Another one of the reasons why I bought the first Nexus 7 was because I wanted a gaming machine. Sadly, as much as NVIDIA tried to promote the Tegra 3 as a “gaming processor”, oh man, I felt ripped off. This was anything but a gaming tablet, and even though I wasn’t forced to use the Tegra Zone with it, those games that were supposed to be compatible with it, always crashed. The fact that Google has chosen the Snapdragon S4 Pro for this tablet is a huge leap. Yes, I know it’s last year’s processor, but the differences with the Snapdragon 600 are minor, and the fact that Android 4.3 is more efficient only makes this tablet more compelling.

It’s what every tablet should be

Every time I pull the iPad mini out of the drawer, it just goes back to it. Let me repeat myself: Tablets are about the display. Using a tablet with a low-resolution display is like trying watch a Blu-ray movie on an old cathode TV. Tablets have the intention of showing you movies, books, and a lot of stuff that the Nexus 7 will excel on because of the screen resolution. I’m still annoyed at how many tablets get announced lately with 160 PPI. I always ask myself what year is this? I feel these companies rip you off, and honestly, with a new Nexus 7 in the market, you shouldn’t spend a dime on anything that’s not better than this device.

On another note, and probably the most important one, is the fact that tablets shouldn’t be expensive. Think about it, you don’t really need a tablet. A tablet can’t replace your computer. Even if you tried to get work done on it, most of us can’t. Tablets shouldn’t be treated as computers and Google challenges this mentality with the Nexus 7. Tablets should all be affordable as you don’t really need them, and regardless of who debates my way of seeing it, I’m sure you won’t complain if this Nexus 7 succeeds up to the point of forcing competition to drop their prices one more time.

The bottom line

Again, we don’t need most of the gadgets that are in the market, but they sure can make our lives cooler or easier. Whenever friends approach me about buying a tablet or a computer, I’m always clear; you don’t need a tablet as much as you do a computer. Still, if the tablet is priced right, and it’s small enough to not bother the heft of your backpack, then why not buy both, right? That’s where the Nexus 7 fits perfectly. The word “need” stops being a point of discussion, and it’s all about the desire now. I want one, and even though I don’t need it, yes, I will buy it.

What about you? Do you feel that the Nexus 7 is what you wanted it to be, or are you still skeptical? Leave us a comment.

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