In Android's early days, the Nexus line served most notably as a comfortable, reliable tentpole. Really, the word "Nexus" was just about the only calm oasis during the operating system's Wild West period of varied hardware. New smartphones and tablets under Google's official banner usually came with the next big Android OS update, and they offered the kinds of stable hardware qualities (resolution, RAM, etc.) that developers could more easily target.

Specs at a glance: HTC Nexus 9 Screen 2048×1536 8.9" (281 PPI) IPS LCD OS Android 5.0 Lollipop CPU Tegra K1 dual-core 2.3GHz Denver RAM 2GB GPU Nvidia Kepler DX1 Storage 16GB or 32GB (non-upgradeable) Networking 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, DLNA, Bluetooth 4.1, A2DP, NFC, optional LTE Ports Micro-USB, headphone Camera 8MP rear camera, 1.2MP front camera Size 8.98" × 6.05" × 0.31" (228 x 154 x 7.9 mm) Weight 15 oz. (425 g) Battery 6700 mAh (non-removable) Starting price $399

That's not the case in 2014. Across the phone-and-tablet spectrum, the hardware has become more homogenized, and even low-end hardware is good enough for typical mobile tasks. And while Android's next major update, Lollipop, offers some substantial visual changes and user requested features (look for the Ars Lollipop review coming separately), the OS is also about to roll out to other capable flagship devices, as if to say that eager upgraders don't need the newest model to dive in. What does the Nexus branding mean for a new device in 2014, then?

In the case of the brand's tablet half, the name seems to mostly signify power. Up until now, Nexus tablets—most notably, the Nexus 7's two iterations—have made waves with a combination of high quality parts and ridiculously low prices, undercutting a slew of other cheap, ho-hum tablets without skimping on performance. This year's Nexus 9, conversely, set its price point just a hair beneath Apple's similar iPad Air 2 while promoting its own industry-topping specs. This is not a tablet meant to blow the competition away with crazy new features or gimmicks; instead, it's a solid, familiar-looking Nexus device that just happens to have a ton of juice.

But just as we asked with the iPad Air 2, what does power really do for users when it's strapped to a mobile-first operating system? Are 8.9 inches of Android any better equipped to scream with 2GB of RAM, a 2.3GHz dual-core processor, and a 192-core Kepler GPU? And does the rest of the package—design, screen, camera—do much to either cement the love of the Android faithful or turn the heads of the iOS weary?

Back problems















At first glance, the Nexus 9 looks remarkably like the Nexus 5 or 2013 Nexus 7—in much the same way that the iPad and iPhone look alike. It's not terribly shocking. For the Nexus line, that means a full-glass front set off with noticeably thin side bezels (though the Nexus 9's top and bottom bezels are the tiniest bit bigger than on the iPad Air 2) and little else that could be called distinctive. The top and bottom of the front face have small indentions for front-facing speakers, with an aluminum trim along the front edges (both Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 were all plastic and glass throughout).

The tablet's back falls in line with its elder siblings, once again using a rubberized coating and a giant, lower-case "nexus" branding. Other than a camera lens (here, a large protruding lens covering an 8 megapixel sensor), that's really it. This model's backside doesn't catch light in a particularly cool-looking way, and worse, it doesn't have the grippy texture of the older Nexus 7, more resembling the smooth back of a Nexus 5. But unlike that phone, this tablet's backside is smoother to the touch; fingers easily glide over it as opposed to stopping firmly while pressed into a phone. The major upside is that if you abhor the cold touch of an aluminum iPad, this is the tablet backing for you.

However, I was dismayed by the gap between the Nexus 9's backing and its guts. When I pushed an index finger into the center of the backside, it pressed down quite a bit, almost as much as a flimsy exterior phone case. That fact, combined with the smooth, plasticky texture, made this construction feel surprisingly cheap. Given Google's much-publicized push for premium build quality in the new Nexuses, this is especially strange. Anybody who suffers from the kind of OCD that makes them, say, flick at a remote control's various parts, will go nuts once they start pressing into the Nexus 9's backside; imagine an iPad with a little bubble of air beneath the Apple logo on the back and you'll understand how easy it is to find and press there during casual use.











Otherwise, this is a remarkably thin, light tablet for its size. It's not quite as thin as an iPad Air 1, yet the Nexus 9 somehow weighs in at a little over half an ounce lighter than the iPad Air 2. However, because its body is overall smaller and denser than the Air 2 (seriously, the side bezels are impressive), the Nexus 9 feels the slightest bit heavier when held with one hand.

Along with the usual headphone and micro-USB ports, the Nexus 9 sports two microphones on its edge (the top-right and bottom-right). The remaining items—the volume and power buttons—aren't exactly "usual." The power button, quite simply, stinks. It barely protrudes, and it requires direct pressure to function. The issue isn't that it requires too much force; it's that your finger has to be in just the right spot while the tablet is held in place.

The long, thin volume rocker also barely protrudes, and it has no separator between the up and down buttons. It's easy to accidentally put a finger up to the space between the power and volume-up buttons and assume you're at the volume bar's midway point. This was annoying enough in normal use, but I went particularly crazy trying to press all of the buttons correctly to capture screenshots (which requires pressing the power and volume-down buttons at the same time).

The Nexus 9 attempts to bypass some of this power-button frustration by letting users double-tap the screen to turn it on. But even this feature didn't work reliably. If I tested the double-tap over and over within a span of a few minutes, it proved reliable, but if the tablet had been cold for a while, I found myself needing to double-tap two or three times to power it on about 20 percent of the time.







Once the screen was live, my complaints dropped considerably. While nearly an inch smaller than the past few iPads' screens, the Nexus 9 shares their resolution of 2048x1536, meaning its pixel density sits just a hair above 280 PPI. The Nexus 9's maximum brightness, with auto-brightness disabled, noticeably outshined the iPad Air 2 at its own max. The difference was clear when reading black text on white pages, and I struggled to find color reproduction issues beyond a slight difference in blue hues or black levels compared to the iPad Air 2. Other than a lead in brightness, nothing made HTC's 8.9-inch screen look particularly better or worse than Apple's latest tablet.





Unless, of course, I looked at the screen from just the right angle. Our Nexus 9 review unit suffered from a considerable amount of white spillage from the screen's topmost boundary. I actually didn't notice this at first, since the portrait orientation is always topped by a black clock/notifications bar. But videos in full-screen landscape mode made me do a few double-takes until I stuck my eyes into the screen cavity to confirm the bad news.

Speaking of watching videos, I don't know how HTC screwed these speakers up. I really liked the front-facing design, as the speakers are set into the Nexus 9's front and face in a way that fingers can almost never block them when holding the tablet comfortably. But I noticed something sounded awkward while watching a Saturday Night Live monologue—a lot of surprising rattle and noise came with voices and applause—so I queued up some loud punk rock music.

The music choice was a random lark due to a personal bias, but it proved particularly telling. The songs were engineered with drums set unusually high in the mix, but HTC's speakers automatically buried them in favor of guitars and vocals. The result sounded pretty horrible, and I never found a convincing case where the Nexus 9 played TV or movie audio in a way that justified its equalizer, which can't be adjusted or disabled.