It's using last year's SoC, basically a two year old GPU and it still has a paltry amount of RAM (They count all the RAM, including CPU and GPU buffers).
Still, this is a better showing of "cheap but good" than the original N7...I'm rather disappointed in mine and it's been relegated to being the Jukebox in my house
Is there anything with better bang/buck available? I must admit I haven't really looked since the Nexus 7 always seemed extraordinary in that regard. Same for the Nexus 4. Maybe I'm victim to some new kind of RDF.
I was tempted by the Nook HD or HD+ clearance pricing, but apart from being generally older hardware, the lack of GPS and lack of a camera make it not worth the ~$60 savings to me. Those may not matter if you use the tablet only as a reading/gaming device though.
It has largely the same SoC and GPU as the just-released-to-great-acclaim international Galaxy S4 (running at a slightly slower clockspeed in the Nexus 7 2013).
As to the RAM being "paltry", compared to what? A desktop? There is no non-Intel tablet that I know of with more RAM. And of course it's shared memory, as it is on every comparable device -- again, are you comparing this with Haswell laptops or something?
The Nexus tablet is a very inexpensive device (as is the Nexus 4, for that matter). It is not intended to push any boundaries, but is to bring the advantages that other, much more expensive products brought to market to the low-end.
Apparently great screen, very decent SoC, dual cameras...$229. Yeah, it's a pretty good entrant.
I've been quite disappointed in my Nexus 7s as well, though half of that I attribute to nvidia -- they are the kings of overpromising and underdelivering. It also has suffered the well known flash degradation, and hopefully Asus/Google have learned something from that debacle.
Still, this is a better showing of "cheap but good" than the original N7...I'm rather disappointed in mine and it's been relegated to being the Jukebox in my house