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In a stunning, shocking twist you'd never see coming, the Nexus 10 looks and feels a lot like the Nexus 7. It also looks and feels a lot like the Nexus 4 — Google's quietly built an impressively cohesive lineup of devices over the last several months. I do wish the Nexus 10 looked a little more like the Nexus 7, though, particularly on the back: the soft-touch, Steve-McQueen-gloves material on the back of the Nexus 7 is grippy and comfortable, and just feels much better than the smooth back of the Nexus 10. The 10-inch model even has a small strip of the dimpled stuff at the top of its rear, which both breaks up the cohesive look and serves as a reminder of what could have been. That stripe, incidentally, is removable — you can pull it off and attach in its place a folio cover for the tablet, which is a pretty clever way of integrating it. Otherwise, the back is dominated by a gigantic indented "NEXUS" and a much smaller, also indented "SAMSUNG." I promise, there will never be any question what device you're using, and who made it. Oddly missing, though? Any mention of Google on the hardware.

Warm and comfortable in a way the iPad isn't

In general, this is a really well-built device, and in many ways I prefer its design to the iPad. The iPad feels very metallic and cold, industrial even — this tablet feels more comfortable, more usable, and more friendly in a way. Its aggressively rounded corners remind me of the TouchPad, as does its plain face. There are long, thin speakers on either side of the display, and they're perfectly implemented: they blend in so well you probably won't notice them, but they provide front-firing stereo audio that's both better and louder than most tablets I've tested. It's not great sound, mind you, only better — but I'll take what I can get.

At 1.33 pounds it's just about the same weight as the iPad, and at 8.9mm thick it's slightly thinner. When you're holding the device in landscape, it's really comfortable, but the 16:10 device is so long and skinny (10.3 inches tall vs. 6.9 inches wide) that it feels top-heavy when you pick it up in portrait. The iPad's much more amenable to being held both ways — in portrait for reading and browsing, landscape for movies and games — while the Nexus 10 is very clearly designed to be held sideways and used in landscape.

The tablet's power button is on its flat top edge, on the left next to the volume controls. Just around the corner on the left side rest the 3.5mm headphone jack and the Micro USB port. The headphone jack was apparently too wide for the edge, and it actually takes a small notch out of the back — it looks really odd, but doesn't seem to cause any problems. A Micro HDMI jack lives all by its lonesome on the right side, and on the bottom there's only the six pogo pins for connecting to... something. There's a theoretical dock using the pins to charge (which are on the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus as well), but the ecosystem for it is currently nonexistent.