• Posted byby Tim

Nexus 10 vs. iPad 4 [Chart]

 

To wrap up the comparisons for the day, we have the Nexus 10 vs. Apple’s fourth generation iPad. There is no doubt in the tech community that there will be plenty more battles between these two devices, so we’ll run down the specs list real quick and give folks a little insight.

For starters, there’s definitely a lack of options for the Nexus 10, but who knows if down the road Google will decide to throw in 3G radios much like they did for the Nexus 7. The iPad’s display has always been one of its selling points, but for a few hundred dollars less, the Nexus 10 is looking to strip the iPad of its crown. Other than those things, this is one should be close. 

Here is the comparison!

Written by

Tim

Stumbling upon Droid Life randomly after purchasing a Motorola DROID in late 2009, then setting out to learn everything he could about Android, Tim quickly became an integral part of the site's comment section. After quite some time of strictly commenting on Droid Life, Tim was offered an opportunity to write feature stories for the site, such as custom ROM overviews, as well as interviews with Android community members. Following success of those, Tim became a full time writer and editor for Droid Life, now spending his time on news articles, device reviews, producing videos, and much more. Tim currently resides in Portland, OR with his longtime girlfriend and two wonderful dog children (Loki & Thor). In his spare time, Tim enjoys playing guitar, drinking coffee, practicing photography, and destroying kids on Call of Duty.

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191 Comments

  • agreed, $50 is more than enough bump for 16 to 32GB as evidenced by that being the 7″ bump. $499 is priced out of the market. These will sit on the shelves while we wait for a better quad core device tablet to be released. Early adopters snap them up so the price drop can begin sooner for the rest of us.

  • Google pls open a nexus store that focus solely nexus along with satisfying amount of accesories for all nexus devices…of course it also wouldnt hurt to support other android based devises as long as the primary focus is all nexus! I think it should of been something you guys should of done ever since the nexus brand was created if you guys were serious about going toe to toe with apple! Microsoft did it why can’t google with all their resources? As a consumer and an android user, the googles own can use it!

  • people actually pay/going to pay $829 for a damn tablet computer? holy f’n s*** people are idiots.

  • I don’t see why the res is so important. Hell there is no content media wise that takes advantage of it. And guess what tablets don’t upscale so I ask what’s the point

  • The question for us has never been hardware with these android tablets. I think most people are concerned with how they perform on a day to day basis. Of course this community knows the answer to that. But do others know yet? And they gotta keep those apps comin

  • Think I’ll hold out with my Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 for something much better. The lower rez screen on this doesn’t bother me one bit. As for ”Tablet apps” the most important one to me has always been the browser and Android is clearly better in that department.
    I have personally owned 4 tablets now and started on the original iPad (Horrible I know) then went to a Asus Transformer, then the Transformer Prime and now the Note 10.1. I absolutely love this tablet the most out of all on the marketso far its just simply amazing. They have raised the bar in the multitasking arena quite high.
    Only other tablet I’m somewhat interested in right now is the Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T. Samsung is knockin the tablets out of the park right now.

  • A few things come to mind when comparing the Nexus 10 to the IPad. First off, The Nexus 10 is god awful ugly and looks super cheap. Secondly, No MicroSD slot? Lastly and most importantly…Apps built for android 10″ tablets…They are a JOKE and this is why time and time again 10″ android tablets fail and IPad win. There isn’t many apps out and and they really aren’t doing much to change that. Look, I hate Apple as much as everyone else and i want to see Google succeed against the IPad, but Google isnt even close until they can produce a better quality tablet, a MUCH LARGER market of apps built for bigger tablets and 3 differentiate themselves and adding MicroSD.

    The Nexus 10 is a very VERY ugly tablet.

    • I don’t know what you’re talking about I use my 10in tablet everyday, and I love the thing. Original XOOM still awesome 1.5 years later.

      • I use my Xoom every day as well.

        And I like the look of the N10. Its a sharp looking device.

    • This processor is the most beastly CPU released to date. And yes that includes the S4 Pro.. A15’s are no joke.

  • and I would have gladly paid $629 for a 32GB with Verizon LTE. Guess they didn’t want my money. :'(

  • This looks awesome. But personally gonna pass on the 10 since I already own the 7 which is a perfect size. The wife and I though are still leaning towards an iPad Mini for our 10yr old. While the Nexus 7 and 10 are MUCH better deals bang for buck. And the Google Koolaid definitely tastes better. My biggest qualm with Android right now is it’s just not marketed to kids at all. Between OSX and iOS Apple has had the education and edutainment market cornered for decades now. Android is just not kid/parent friendly at all. Kindle Fire, Windows Phone 8, and iOS all come with parental control like features baked right in. And only Apple seems to have the best educational and most kid friendly apps on the market. I know there are some 3rd party apps out there for Android that provide SOME of this. But they’ve all been lacking. This kinda stuff should be baked in. I think if Google focused some energy on this market as well as encouraged more edutainment developers to build for Android they’d increase Nexus 7 and 10 sales even more so. I’m certain there are tons of other parents like myself who are willing to dish out that extra $100 bucks for the iPad Mini to have that parental piece of mind.

  • WHY doesn’t the N10 come with a HSPA/3G version?!?! Hasn’t Google seen the iPad spec sheet. They have version with wifi only AND with mobile data connectivity. Could they at least pitch their product (which in my view is superior on other fronts) with enough versions for everyone?

  • While I want this device, and would have bought it release day, I learned my lesson with my N7. Yeah yeah, I know “but you got a $25 Google Play Credit” blah blah blah. I don’t care, I would rather have $50 in my wallet AND have a tablet that doesn’t have the screen flickering BS. Love what Google is doing with the specs and pricing – but I’m not gonna’ be the earlier adopter sucker again.

  • The specs look good on paper; maybe good in real too. but I’m still gonna get an iPad4, come black Friday. Just ‘coz I already have an Android device and wanna taste iOS waters now. Also, as many pointed, no Android Tablet app ecosystem to rave about.

    • People keep throwing this ios app bs around…Apple touts their apps because that’s all it has going for itself. Everything that I desire to do on a tablet…every app that I need/want to use I am currently using in an optimized version on my Android Tablet. On top of that, these tablets, with the latest greatest version of Jellybean DO MORE INHERINTLY (built into the os) than many ios apps can do. The features of Jellybean alone are a compelling enough reason to consider an Android Nexus tablet over an iPad.

  • the biggest difference is probably the price..the a6 is a good processor but the exynos 5 definitely beats it, hands down. obviously the display is crisper on the samsung also, but if ur in the ios ecosystem, the only thing that will change a user is the price & a few android features. also google/samsung will drop an LTE version maybe before the holidays.

    i agree w/ Timoh. it should only be $50 to double the storage. good call on that

    • Superior hardware and OS. Only one thing left to conquer… Apps. It will happen. Inevitable.

  • Specs looks great on paper but that’s pretty much it. Day to day use hits a glaring reality check that tablets apps on Android plainly sucks compared to iPad apps. Shame on Google for not spearheading the way for great Android tablet apps!

  • NFC.. but no GPS.

    So, they assume you might carry it around to use NFC, but the same carrying around wouldn’t benefit from GPS. It is hella easy to put GPS into a tablet.

  • Hardware just blows the new new iPad out of the water, if this causes devs to brings their apps to near iPad level the iPad would look like a paperweight compared to this.

    • How so? They’re pretty much tied on every spec except two. The Nexus has and extra GB of RAM and a higher ppi screen, both of which will not be utilized, because of the lack of tablet apps in the Play Store.

      • It also doesn’t hurt that the screen resolution is higher and that Android is the leading OS in the world and has nearly caught up in the tablet market. I’d say this device should start to turn some heads. It’s pretty fantastic.

        • Please show me sales figures that back up your point. Also web traffic statistics disprove your assertion. The only thing you have ever seen to give any credence to your claim is surveys of 500 or so people. I hope you don’t actually believe surveys over actual empirical data.

      • First, tablet optimized apps are not truly necessary like they are on iOS. In android all apps are scalable, tablet apps are nice because they take advantage of the extra screen real estate but since the apps still display full size instead of blown up, they are not truly needed. Furthermore people tend to go with what gives them more bang for their buck, although the Nexus 10 and iPad 4 are both great tablets and similarly specced, you can get the 32gb Nexus 10 for the same price as the 16gb iPad 4.

        Also if you truly use Android devices you would know there are still thousands of apps that are tablet specific including most graphic intensive games and that extra gb of RAM does make a difference in speed. Don’t believe it look at the comparisons of the quad core 1 gb ram GS3 to the US version which is dual core with 2 gb of ram. They perform almost identically, the ram, just like it does in a computer, makes a difference when running multiple apps.

      • well it is thinner and lighter .. i wouldnt mention this but seems like apple fans now suddely care about thickness when their beloved iphone now lists it as an advantage .. also i think the new A15 Architecture will translate into better battery life .. also higher ppi screen is a big plus (again according to ifanboys)

      • Tied? The N10 has a higher resolution, larger screen, greater pixel density, faster CPU, twice as much RAM, higher resolution front camera, NFC, yet is ligher. Granted, the iPad4 has cellular options and a 64GB storage model, and we haven’t seen battery usage/efficiency tests yet, but to say “pretty much tied on every spec except two” is “pretty much” completely false.

  • Haha now Google can be the one to say: “How can their be more, but less?” You buy a product that is better than its most direct competition for 100 bucks less… I love you GOOGLE! 😀

    • A great spec sheet doesn’t make it better. Specs mean nothing without an app ecosystem. And Android tablets lack an app ecosystem

        • But are they Tablet apps? Android Tablet apps are improving but it seems to be at a snails pace. My wife has an Ipad. I have an Android tablet. The Ipad DirecTV app is beautiful. Built in remote, watch all sorts of shows. Browsing channels is seamless. On Android I’m stuck with a phone view that is clumsy and tends to fail quite often. I’ve actually sat and compared app for app and like it or not, Apple still has Android beat in that department.

          • I’d blame DirecTV for not developing the app not so much Google. They may not have had incentive with the relatively low market share. But with that changing hopefully we see some more companies updating their android apps.

          • I’m definitely not blaming Google. The guidelines are out there on how to create good tablet apps or apps in general. Hopefully we will begin to see an increase of companies updating their apps with all the high-end Android tablets that are now available. “Droid-Life” wink – wink!?!

      • stew man… you are trolling pretty hard. you are complaining every positive point with one point… over… and over. just chill, they mention in the video that the nexus 7 was meant to excite the community for tablets im sure tablet apps will start to pour out when this is released google doesn’t even really have a company tablet yet as the nexus 7 has a phone UI.

        • I’m not meaning to. I have a G-Nex and an iPad. And I have a close friend with an Android tablet. Just trying to get a point across. It’s something that is left out of most reviews and comparisons.

          • You have a valid point, but I think with the N7, N10 and some of the other newer tablets we might see that turn around 🙂

    • Greedy bastards – goog isn’t much better than appl – same reason why they don’t bother to put in a MicroSD slot. How much would that cost them? $5-10? It’s not about cost, but always about profit!

      • there is a diff reason they dont put a micro sd slot .. i thought like you too but read up to find the truth .

          • I am sorry, but that just makes no sense whatsoever. It’s ok to say that they are in for more profit. But for reliability? How?

          • MicorSD slots have a higher failure rate.

            Another major reason I’ve heard is to create a single filesystem. While mounting the internal storage as ext and the sd as FAT32, that’s multiple formats and will make the OS perform slower. On top of that it’s just simpler to have one volume of storage.

          • Tell that to my computer with several volumes across several drives. It is not simpler. By getting rid of SD slots, they force people to dish out hundreds of dollars to them instead of buying a 30 dollar 64GB card from sandisk. Plain and simple.

            It’s not like you’re forced to use a micro SD slot if your phone has one, by your logic, we should remove all USB ports because it makes things simpler, and because they’re slower than SATA.

          • Fix your wedgie and quit telling me why I’m wrong. I’m not wrong. That’s from a Google engineer’s mouth. Go tell him he’s wrong. He gets paid to make such decisions. Not that he cares what some commenter on the internet says. I’m sure google doesn’t have millions of dollars of R&D dedicated to the subject.

          • There is two main reasons according to Google and the both revolve around experience.

            1. Having multiple volumes is confusing and requires user file organization, rather than OS file organization. Ever had an Android device where you system memory was full so you had to move a game onto an sd card? Having to worry about which partition is full and moving around apps negatively impacts experience. Maybe not for you, but for the majority of consumers.

            2. Using an SD card is slower. Most people don’t buy class 10 SD cards for their phones so file read and write times are automatically much slower than using internal flash. But even if you do have a class 10, external file I/O is still slower. Plus, when you open apps like photo galleries and music players, they have to index two locations which drastically degrades performance.

          • If these are the flimsy reasons google is giving for not
            installing an SD card then they are demonstrating the arrogance and contempt
            that they have for their customers. Let’s go through both of these.

            1. First off. If I fill up an Android device without an SD
            card I’m just screwed! How’s that for a negative impact? They’re right, I won’t
            have to worry about which partition is full. I’ll have to worry about which one
            of my beloved games is getting the axe to make room for the new game! What
            about cloud storage you say? That would be the same thing as having multiple
            volumes and google believe that would be confusing and require user file
            organization. Feeble minded users can’t be expected to keep track of those
            sorts of things.

            2. Using an SD card is slower? As compared to what? Sure,
            it’s slightly slower than the onboard memory but it’s still pretty wicked fast.
            Most apps only have to do indexing once and done, unless something changes,
            that’s the whole point of indexing. And again, the only alternative is the
            cloud. Over that last several years I have amassed terabytes worth of movies
            and music (Legally!) Putting those movies on an SD card is infinitely faster
            and easier than trying to cloud stream from a cruddy coffee shop wifi.

            No, google has not given any GOOD reasons for not including
            a SD expansion slot on their devices.

          • While I must agree that some of the reason why Google doesn’t include a MicroSD card is to move stuff to the cloud, that is not their sole reason for doing so. The other main reason is to reduce the complexity of Android since it doesn’t have to deal with multiple file systems and mounting file systems; they also are trying to move away from USB Mass Storage and transition to MTP so that when your device is connected to the computer both your computer and your device can access the same storage simultaneously.

          • And that’s not a good enough reason. Plain and simple.

            A good friend of mine put it this way. What if I want to take my N10 on a road trip with my family. I could have the music I listen to on one SD card, the movies my kids like on another (or several) and then have another one for the family movies, pictures, etc., we want to show relatives when we get there.

            Cloud storage isn’t going to help this. He’s not going to get confused by having more than one type of storage. Reduce complexity? By how much? Hell, why not just make it where it shows a 1 or a 0. That would reduce complexity too! This argument makes no sense either!

          • Bingo. Their reasons have all been crap and frankly they sound like the kind of nonsense Apple usually dishes up to their fanboy customer base. Google will see that we don’t all just accept everything they say. Google is wrong about this and needs to hear from us.

      • yes, god forbid companies should try to make money.
        I’m sure you are not so greedy and do volunteer work to show them.

    • Most tech articles say they are doing it because apple does it because its a great way to make up money for the device to help not take a loss on selling them so low. Charging $50 to 100 for an sd card that cost 7.50 retail helps them generate revenue plain and simple, just from tech articles I’ve been reading.

      • Fine. Then make a version with an SD card slot and change $50 for it. I would take that over no option.

    • It’s odd that Nexus 7 is $50 more for the 32GB while the Nexus 10 is $100 more. Doesn’t make much sense except as a way to profit from power users.

  • Kellex, you forgot Wifi specs. Both have 802.11a/b/g/n, but the iPad has dual-band, Nexus 10 doesn’t

  • For me, it all comes down to open source v. closed source. As long as Android is open and iOS is closed, Google will get my business.

  • Google can tout that resolution as much as they want to, but there’s one problem. They can barely get developers to make Tablet optimized apps, much less 300 ppi tablet optimized apps. Sure, the ppi is very impressive on paper, but with no apps to support it, it’ll just be any old Android tablet.

    • if you havent noticed there is no nexus tablet out yet, this will be a first. the nexus 7 is not really a tablet as it has phone UI. after this is released im sure developers will come out with all sorts of apps… ps if you dont like android you are free to leave anytime you want. yes you have freedom of speech but you are just trying to poke people to get a reaction.

    • Is that how all apple products are? They are innovative at first then fall behind due to lack of new features. Then every once in a while they add something new or raise the bar for items/standardize it. For example tablets where always 720p then the iPad jumped past that and now we are finally get tablets that getting closer to that (1080p) or like the N10.

    • Ya know, besides Retina (which they did in March, before Google), industry-leading international LTE

  • Who cares about that RES? Google isn’t putting enough effort into push Devs into making Tablet Apps that will take advantage of that screen. This is where android is failing in the Tablet arena. There is no differentiating factor. What do I have to look forward to? My N7 apps / phone apps being blown up to that RES?

    • Its all about incentives. Devs will see Google getting serious about tablets, so they will produce more/better tablet apps. It may take a bit, but they will come.

      • Why doesn’t Google just Partner with the bigger app devs to show off some Tablet optimized apps? Especially at an announcement like this? They aren’t taking the initiative at all.

        • Agreed. Maybe some of the big, more commonly used apps. They really need to put some initiative for app devs to make tablet optimized apps

      • Absolutely. As an app dev I am going to buy one of these pretty much so I can make sure my apps look good on it… and I want one 🙂

      • So my screen for whatever reason had trouble loading your comment and it looked blurry and out of focus. I thought you were making a sarcastic point, now I see my computer has a great sense of timing.

    • This argument doesn’t hold much water when referring to android. There are a lot of high resolution apps for android as-is. Due to device variation. Android will utilize the entire screen whether it was designed with a phone or tablet in mind. On iOS if you design an app for an iPhone it will only use a fraction of the screen on the iPad. That’s why it is so important that there are tablet specific apps on iOS.

        • But even though they are scaled to fit on android, they dont exactly have a new interface that would be better for a tablet than a phone. While phone apps work on tablets 1000 times better on android than iphones, the tablet specific apps dont take advantage of the extra space on android as much as apple tablets. Its all about having a different interface on the larger screen

          • True but being a regular user of both Android and iOS I prefer how apps are done with Android apps. I would much rather have all apps be fully usable and non stretched looking on a tablet with a few less optimized specifically for it than have most apps next to unusable and stretched and a few more tablet optimized apps.

            I have both the Nexus 7 and iPad 3.

          • I agree. Id rather have that too. Its just a big marketing point i suppose. And ive never played with an ipad that much, but the non tablet optimized apps to look awful when stretched out

      • That is a factor but it is not the most important reason. iPad specific apps are normally redesigned compared to their iPhone counterparts. The bigger screen allows the developer to make different design choices. Mint.com is a perfect example. The iPhone app is designed to look very nice on a smaller screen and the iPad app looks completely different in order to take advantage of the added screen real estate. The same principle holds true for nearly every major iPad app, excluding games which generally look the same just bigger.

    • I just disagree. I don’t think it’s Google fault. Developers aren’t upgrading their apps as quickly as you saw on iOS, because their apps actually still work just fine on tablets. They aren’t 2x zoomed like on iOS and iPad does with iPhone apps. They work, they scale, and that unfortunately is enough for many devs to be lazy and not take the time to update their apps.

      I don’t think it’s Google at all that’s at fault here. They have done everything they can outside of just paying developers like Microsoft is doing with Windows 8.

  • In order to convert Watt Hours to mAh you need to know the voltage.

    E(Wh) = Q(mAh) × V(V) / 1000

    • those were the units given, can’t really give you information that was not given to them

      • If we can figure it out, why couldn’t the author of this article? That information would have been helpful

          • I enjoy my time here. Just saying it would have been helpful to see a real comparison. tit-for-tat. Standardized results are always nice.

          • You blame a website because Apple chooses to use different measurements than the rest of the world? Must be a fan of “retina” as well.

          • Oh ya, I’m a fan of over-hyped and over-priced products. I definitely like to pay more, for less.

          • why are you being such an a-hole in your comments? if you go to the apple site the battery is listed as 42.5-watt-hour and there isnt information given to convert it.

          • Why are you so defensive? We shouldn’t just bend over and take it from Apple. We need to make it known that we don’t like their unit of measurement. D-L could have ran the calculations.

          • I’m not the one writing the article, I’m not the one with a responsibility to readers. Now who’s the prick?

          • no, im just saying they did a fine job of doing this, quit being nitpicky. there is no reason for you to be an a-hole to other commenters about giving you the easily searchable information.

          • Seems you’re one of those people, that believes others are incapable of making mistakes. Just saying the article would be a better comparison if it was complete.

          • get this through your thick skull. THEY USED THE INFORMATION THAT WAS LOCATED ON THE MANUFACTURER’S WEBSITE.

          • Get THIS through your skull: It’s D-L’s responsibility to collect most relevant information possible.

          • go tell apple to change what they are reporting on their site and get back to me on how that goes.

          • I plan to visit Cupertino next month, so yes, as a matter of fact, I WILL be dropping a note into their suggestion box.

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