Google Nexus 7 Crushes All Others – Or Does It?

So as the whole tech world is aware, Google released its Asus-made Nexus 7 around July 12th – we aren’t going to review the device as there have already been tons of almost-universally rave reviews – see The Verge’s review here - The Verge Review – Nexus 7

Now – Here is the article we were going to write on July 14th: 

Google Nexus 7 Crushes All Others – Maybe A Win for Windows 8 Tablets?

The Google Nexus 7  has unquestionably set the Gold Standard with its unrivaled value proposition.

With quad core Tegra 3, an iPad 2 beating screen resolution of 1280 by 800,  1GB of RAM and selling for $199.00, the Nexus 7 basically shuts the market for any and all other Android tablet manufacturers, at least for now.

Why is anyone going to pay $249.00 for the inferior Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0? Or $199.00 for the out-of-date and seriously inferior Kindle Fire? Or how about $499.00! for the Toshiba Excite 7.7?

Put simply – Google is doing something with its pricing strategy that only Google and Amazon can afford to do.

And that is – sell market leading devices at a loss.

That is the killer punch – Google and Amazon don’t care and don’t have to care about selling the hardware at a profit.

But Lenovo, Toshiba, Acer, Asus  and probably Samsung as well – none of these Android tablet manufacturers – whose past sales records in the tablet arena have been monumentally mediocre – none of these guys can play in the space like Google and Amazon.

And that’s why we say – Game Over.

Sooner or later, but we bet sooner, this reality is going to become clear to these guys.

And so maybe, just maybe, this is going to propel – shotgun more like – the big Asian PC/Tablet makers into the the Windows 8 tablet space. It may be their only opportunity to be relevant and profitable.

Um, of course the elephant in the room there may well be the Microsoft Surface – but that it is a subject for another article.

So – Where Do We Stand on July 28th?

Yes the Nexus 7 is that shining tablet on the hill and its value proposition remains without equal. But…

But we have now seen some shockingly bad Nexus 7′s – each plagued by a number of screen defects, so bad as to make the device nearly unusable.

See this YouTube page for just a fraction of the YouTUbe vides posted documenting a wide range of screen defect issue and other problems:

Just YouTube search for ‘Nexus 7 screen’ to see the ever growing number of similar reports.

We, ourselves, had Google replace our Nexus devices and here is the latest defect we have experienced – and bear in mind – this is a replacement device from Google when you assume that Google would have tried to ensure that replacement devices were defect free – note the vertical white bars caused by lightly pressing the screen:

Screen Ripple problem –

So will these quality issues be remedied? We guess so – although it will be recalled that Asus has had its fair share of issues with the Transformer tablet line.

Stay tuned…