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NVIDIA Tegra Note 7 Tested, Fastest Android 4.3 Slate Under $200
MojoKid writes "NVIDIA officially took the wraps off of its Tegra Note mobile platform a few weeks back. If you're unfamiliar with the Tegra Note, it's a 7", Android-based tablet, powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 4 SoC. The Tegra Note 7 also marks NVIDIA's second foray into the consumer electronics market, with an in-house designed product; NVIDIA's SHIELD Android gaming device was the first out of the gate earlier this year. Though Tegra Note 7 on the surface may appear to be just another 7-inch slate, sporting a 1280X720 display, it does have NVIDIA's proprietary passive stylus technology on board, very good sounding speakers and an always on HDR camera. It's also one of the fastest Android tablets on the market currently, in the benchmarks. Unlike in NVIDIA's SHIELD device, the Tegra 4 SoC is passively cooled in Tegra Note 7 and is crammed into a thin and light 7" tablet form factor. As a result, the SoC can't hit peak frequencies quite as high as the SHIELD (1.8GHz vs. 1.9GHz), but that didn't hold the Tegra Note 7 back very much. In a few of the CPU-centric and system level tests, the Tegra Note 7 finished at or near the head of the pack, and in the graphics benchmarks, its 72-core GeForce GPU competed very well, and often allowed the $199 Tegra Note 7 to outpace much more expensive devices."
Wow, an ad for a nVidia product posing as a slashdot article... this is, unfortunately, getting more and more common. :(
In case you were wondering what always-on HDR actually means: http://androidcommunity.com/nvidia-tegra-4-always-on-hdr-camera-demo-20130320/ Looks rather nice, actually.
soylentnews.org
I got my kids some $59 "iRola" Jelly Bean tablets from nomorerack for Christmas and they're really fantastic for the price, and plenty of machine for kids, and at a price that you can give them to kids. I paid ~$250 for a Nook color a couple years ago and other than the screen quality, these are much better.
Yeah, the LCD viewing angle is old-school but kids don't care - all the games and Netflix work great, and the wireless radios work without complaint. I even snuck some math and foreign language games on there (and the "Kids Place" time limiter).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Company introduces new version of an established form factor, except slightly faster. Not really worthy of mention. The disruptive (or potentially disruptive) products are the ones /. should be covering -- like the tiny new laptop chargers from finsix (complete with built-in USB port so it can charge your phone at the same time). Let's hope for something extremely clever to come out of the upcoming CES show. I'm not holding my breath, though; we may have a decade of iterative improvements in tablet tech ahead of us before the next big hardware shift.
It does well for on-screen benchmarks, because of the low resolution of 1280x720.
For on-screen tests, it will have to process fewer pixels than the more expensive models with high-res screens.
This makes it look faster than it is, as you can see by the off-screen benchmark results.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
main board .. please?
Why would anybody want the video camera on this tablet to be "always on"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's a promo for what it's supposed to do from nVidia here. The short of it is that they're trying to replicate what pressure-sensitive active styluses do without requiring you to actually have a pressure-sensitive stylus. Instead it seems to use some kind of pattern-recognition on the input signatures from the passive stylus to figure out what you're intending to do, and does things like vary stroke width with pressure, or treat the back side of a stylus as an eraser, etc. Cool if it works: if you can replicate a more expensive hardware stylus in software, go ahead. But does it work reliably?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No thanks, nVidia. I'm not buying any more Tegra products unless you release the drivers so that CM can work properly with them.
Your wife agrees.
Considering that modern smartphones are coming with 1920x1080 resolution on a 5inch LCD, 1280x720 is pathetic on a 7 inch LCD.
The Nintendo DS has a resistive touch screen that gives a stream of (X, Y) pairs, with the first and last being unreliable. It also gives a raw resistance value that decreases with increasing pressure. Colors!, a homebrew paint program for Nintendo DS, uses the resistance to estimate how much area of the (round plastic) stylus is in contact with the touch screen, and then it uses that to modulate brush size and/or opacity. It's impressive for something so much cheaper than what Wacom was selling at the time.
I recently handled a Lenovo Yoga 8 tablet. This thing has paltry specs, but front-facing stereo speakers, an adjustable stand and power and volume buttons you can actually press without looking for them without any risk of pressing them by accident. I was utterly impressed.
Most tablets are just so BORING. There are very few tablets that actually try some new and useful things. Really, being able to put that thing up onto a table and easily adjust the angle so that the camera when using Skype actually shows me and not the ceiling is more useful to me than pushing the benchmarks a little farther out. Why are there so precious few tablets allowing this? Why has even the fine Nexus 7 the power and volume button hidden behind the bezel, all of them in the same shape and close together, so that half of the time you have to first hunt them down and then you still press the wrong one often enough? Why?
To you.
You are not everyone else, nor vice versa. Thankfully.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
On Wall St:
Shares in electrical tape makers rose 10% today. A spokesperson said, sales of Black Tape in particular have been strong since the start of the Holiday Season.
Personally, all my devices that have cameras have a small bit of tape placed over the camera from day 1. My phone does not even have one.
So up yours (to 'The Man!')
Hey, it's not like they're chained to the workbenches or anything. Oh wait...
So many words just because you have no idea what you're talking about...
It's not the camera that is always on. Its the HDR mode that is always on when you use the camera. Reading "always-on HDR camera" and jumping up and down just because you can almost feel the well-known button ("NSA! Spies! They want to see me all day long!!) being pressed is a bit tired now.
Really, it's almost like Spam these days. In the original Mounty Python meaning that coined the phrase (not that /. readers these days would know about that). "You can have Egg and Spam. Or Egg, Bacon and Spam. Egg, Bacon, Sausage and Spam. Spam, Bacon, Sausage and Spam. Spam, Egg, Spam, Spam, Bacon and Spam. Spam, Spam, Spam, Egg and Spam..."
Yes, and that slashvertisement BS is getting mighty old. It's a legitimate product review that discusses the pluses and minuses of the product. Take time to actually read the content submitted instead of being so judgmental maybe?
Y'all should have a look a the homepage of this POS.
What I wanna know is what the fuck is up with his sig? It actually sounds to me like he's celebrating the death of Lincoln and wants the slaves re-enslaved. What kind of bastard is this guy?
Sure, the linked to article is a *real* review. The slashdot summary is not, it reads exactly like an ad, that's what makes it a "Slashvertisement". Too bad it's no longer *news* since the tablet was released in NOVEMBER, over one month ago.
And by calling it a "slashverdtisement" I don't imply that Slashdot is getting paid in any way, I mean that the summary reads more like an ad than a "news" item for nerds.
The product was released at the end of NOVEMBER and is just now getting out to retail. No need to shout that. And just because an article here speaks to a product's salient features (both good and not so good - lest you forget the lower res display was mentioned too) doesn't make it an advertisement.
I had to come read it to cleanse my palate after glancing at the flute story. JFC, Slashdot!
What i want is all that matters.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Interesting that we have 2 or 4 core processors handling program execution, and in the same device 72 cores handling graphics processing. The GPU cores are much simpler and smaller than the CPU cores, but get through a lot of processing. Some of the most cost-effective supercomputers built use GPUs to handle compute-intensive processing. Maybe it's time to do the RISC thing all over again and radically reduce the complexity of the CPU by reducing its instruction set size so we can pack 72 simple CPU cores onto a single silicon chip.
I saw the specs for the Tegra Note a while ago and got a bit bored with them because:
1. It's not a Nexus device, so is already behind with its Android version. Now it may be with the many updates to the Nvidia Shield, we might see speedy updates to the Note as well, but until this actually happens, I'll err on the side of caution.
2. I would prefer an 8" display in the same dimensions and weight as a typical 7" tablet (e.g. reduce the bezel width). 7" displays aren't just quite large enough, IMHO.
3. The screen resolution is 1280x800, not 1280x720, but even so that only matches the 2012 Nexus 7 from 18 months ago and partially explains why its graphics benchmarks are so good.
Having said all that, Currys in the UK are selling it at 129.99 pounds ($215), which is actually a very good price for a decently spec'ed tablet in the UK.
...to you.
And quite probably only you.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This is a copy from my post on Engadget, Modesto updated. The tablet has many compelling USPs, and is a great successor to the Kai platform developed by nVidia and used in the OG nexus 7. If the nexus 7 is news on Slashdot (as it often is) then why wouldn't this be? ======== I have one and am stylus-swype typing on it right now. As a mobile web developer, I use a half dozen different tablets regularly, and this is my favorite. Key points: 1. Stylus is awesome. Get the fine tip for impressive accuracy. Use it to type or select small web elements, or sketch, or circle screen grabs to share. Pressure sensitivity is impressive, and document editing is so much easier. 2. The silk screen on mine is vastly more muted than the photo, so you can barely see the markings. So it actually looks pretty good. I like the grippy bow tie. And impressive build quality. 3. SD card slot. Drop in a 64gb ultra speed card and you get an 80gb tablet. And yes, the "move to SD" feature works great. Just adding 48gb to an apple tablet cost what these days, $200? 4. HDMI out. Both nexus and apple refuse to provide this or the sd card. 5. Font facing stereo *loud* speakers. What a revelation! With a resonance port, they even have some bass. Vastly better than most tablets where you have to cup your hand around the back to hear anything. 6. Very, very fast. Faster than a Samsung Note 3 for 1/3 the price! In many applications, frame rates are 2-3x the 2013 nexus 7. 7. AO HDR is very useful in difficult lighting situation. Many times I can capture much better images than with my nexus 4. In all it is a great media player, game player, and small productity tablet at a great price. Just do get the screen protector.