When I pulled into my driveway on Friday evening there were two boxes waiting for me. One contained new mountain biking clothing. The other contained my new Nexus 7 tablet. I’m sure that most of you don’t care about my mountain biking clothing, but I have a hunch that many of you are interested in my thoughts about the Nexus 7 tablet. This is my preliminary hands-on review of the Nexus 7.

What I Like About the Nexus 7:
1. The screen. It is bright and crisp. Reading on the screen doesn’t stress my eyes like my Galaxy 10.1 does.
2. The size. I can hold it in one hand and reach every part of the screen (I have fairly average size hands for an average 5′ 11″ man).
3. Android Jelly Bean. One of the features that I like is zoom option when trying to select a link or other email font feature.
4. Chrome. I can run Chrome as the web browser and sync it to my laptop and desktop.
5. The camera clarity. When I used it for a 30 minute Skype call it it was perfect.

What I don’t like about the Nexus 7:
1. The size. The screen size makes the device default to the mobile phone interface. You can change this if you root the device, but I think that voids the warranty.
2. The lack of a back camera. There is only one camera and it is front facing. I could capture a picture with it if I held it backwards, but I wouldn’t know for sure what I was capturing.

Would I buy it for students?
So far I feel the same way about the Nexus 7 as I do about the iPad and about my Samsung Galaxy tablet. I would not purchase a tablet as the only device for a 1:1 program. Yes, these tablets can be used to create content but that’s not what they’re designed to do.  That said, I would purchase the Nexus 7 for elementary schools before I purchased iPads for elementary schools. Why? Because I can buy two Nexus 7 tablets for the cost of the least expensive iPad.

This post was written on my Nexus 7.