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Battery life
The new Nexus 7 packs a 3950 mAh battery. This is actually a step down from the original Nexus 7, which housed a 4325 mAh cell. Google rates the new Nexus 7 at 9 hours of use, whereas it estimated the original at 10.
The move to a smaller cell probably helped to size down the tablet, and in our day to day use, hasn't hurt its longevity. You can use the device quite intensely all day, surfing the web, watching movies, downloading, playing and using apps, and still have about twenty percent charge left when you plug it in at night. With moderate use to light, meaning email checks, web surfing, some Facebook, Twitter and a little YouTube, we were rarely below 75 percent at the end of the day.
The new Nexus 7 also has excellent standby battery use. As a test, we would leave the Nexus tablet on our nightstand, powered on, screen off, with all notifications enabled. In the morning after a restful eight hours, the battery would have have burned down only four percent.
We also applied the patented TechRadar battery test, looping a 720p video for ninety minutes, with screen brightness maxed, notifications enabled and the volume muted. From a full charge, the tablet burned down to 80 percent after ninety minutes.
To give you a further idea of the tablet's performance in a more real life scenario, streaming Netflix for one hour in a dark bedroom would take the battery down ten percent.
Overall, we were quite impressed with the battery performance of the new Nexus 7. Unlike a phone, a tablet isn't the kind of device you're using all day, every day, but even if you were traveling with it, say from TechRadar's UK offices in Bath to TechRadar US in South San Francisco, you'd be able to get through several films before it went dead on you.
Note that all these test were conducted on a 32GB WiFi model. We did not have an LTE model to test.
Connectivity
In the United States, the Nexus 7 is available as either a WiFi only devices, or with 4G LTE connectivity. So far we've heard T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T will be on deck as carriers.
In the UK, a 4G model will be available for £299. We've reached out to Google for information as to carriers, and availability in Australia, and will update the review when we have an answer.
As we've mentioned, our review was conducted on a 32GB WiFi model. We did not have an LTE model to test.
In addition to dual-band WiFi with support for 2.4G/5G 802.11 a/b/g/n, our Nexus 7 review unit also also had Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC.
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