The Nexus 9: A High-Performance Android Tablet with Some Drawbacks

In this review, we'll take a closer look at the Nexus 9, a high-performance Android tablet that's perfect for users who want a smooth and quick experience. With its powerful hardware and stock Android operating system, the Nexus 9 is definitely one of the best Android tablets out there.

One of the standout features of the Nexus 9 is its camera capabilities. The device comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, which are both capable of taking high-quality photos and videos. Additionally, the tablet also has dual microphones for improved audio quality, making it ideal for watching movies or playing games.

Another notable feature of the Nexus 9 is its display. The device boasts an 8.9-inch screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, which provides a crisp and clear viewing experience. However, there are some issues with the display. Light bleeding, where excess light seeps along the edges of the screen, can be seen in dark scenes or when looking at the edge of the display. This is not uncommon on high-end tablets like the Nexus 9, but it's still a noticeable issue.

The battery life of the Nexus 9 is also impressive. With maximum brightness and some gaming involved, we were able to get around 3.5 hours of usage out of the device. However, this can be improved by dialing back screen brightness, using less processor-intensive apps, or turning on the power saving mode.

In terms of performance, the Nexus 9 is smooth and quick, with a high frame rate that makes animations feel fluid. The single-core score of the Geekbench 3 test actually beats out some higher-end tablets like the iPad Air 2. However, the multi-core score of the Nexus 9 does trail behind the iPad Air 2.

The Nexus 9 also has impressive speakers, thanks to its front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers. These speakers are loud and clear, with a good dynamic range that makes watching movies or playing games a pleasure.

In terms of overall design, the Nexus 9 feels like a budget tablet at times. The soft, flexible materials on the back creak and pop, and the edges feel sharp and angular. This can make it uncomfortable to hold the device in certain orientations.

However, one of the standout features of the Nexus 9 is its overall size. At 8.9 inches, the device is not too big or too small, making it comfortable to handle in any orientation. The keyboard also feels nice and well-designed, with a smooth typing experience.

In conclusion, while the Nexus 9 has some drawbacks, such as light bleeding on the display and a less-than-perfect build quality, it's still an excellent Android tablet that's perfect for users who want a smooth and quick experience. With its powerful hardware, great camera capabilities, and impressive audio quality, the Nexus 9 is definitely worth considering if you're in the market for a new tablet.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys mike here the detroit board with a look at the new htc nexus 9 which is google's new flagship tablet for 2014 launching with android 5.0 or lollipop which is a major redesign of the os which we're going to take a look at in this video so this retails for 3.99 for 16 gigs or 479 for 32 gigs so this is no longer a budget tablet like the nexus 7 and nexus 10 it's replacing this kind of fits between those two tablets with an 8.9 inch display so it's kind of filling the gap between both of them and does deliver some pretty high end specs so we have an 8.9 inch lcd ips panel with a resolution of 1536 by 2048 which is good for 281 pixels per inch we also have an 8 megapixel camera on the back with an led flash a 1.7 megapixel camera on the front along with htc boom sound stereo speaker so that's front facing stereo speakers which is welcome on any tablet we also have a 6700 milliamp hour internal battery which is non-removable and we have lots of other features like 802.11 ac wi-fi nfc technology as well as bluetooth 4.1 now currently we have two gigs of ram we have a dual core 2.3 gigahertz nvidia tegra k1 with 64-bit processing and a kepler dx1 gpu with 192 cores yes 192 cores on the gpu all right so let's go and crack into our packaging here which is pretty minimal you just have the nine embossed on the front and the nexus 6 packaging is also identical just kind of flip it around and shrink it down you get an idea what the nexus 6 packaging is like of course i will be reviewing the nexus 6 in the future video so you can see we have these bands surrounding the packaging to keep it sealed up so we're going to slice that to get into it so let's go ahead and do that right now all right so let's go ahead and lift the lid very easy and there we go there we have our tablet tucked into its packaging cradle here it's going to pull it up and there we go so we can see our tablet wrapped in plastic nexus on the back just says nexus not nexus 9 or anything like that and as you can see this is the indigo black back panel so let's go and peel off this wrapper there we go slides right out got that nice soft touch back panel very similar in feel to the nexus 5 and or the black nexus 5 and the nexus 7 the black nexus 7. it's kind of soft touch rubbery material all right we're going to take a really close look at this in just a moment we just want to clear the contents here to see what else they include so we have our nexus branding here then we have some paperwork here very nicely done so you can see we have our basic information tells us about nfc or power button vine buttons that sort of thing very basic warranty safety guide then we have our standard accessories like a power adapter so this is a pretty standard 5 volt charger that you would get on any other htc product with the htc branding and the usb port at the top and then we have a standard htc usb 2.0 cable which is pretty nicely designed with the curved edges now in the back of the tablet you'll find that serial number sticker that is easily removed and of course once you remove it you probably are going to throw it out so they do keep the spares in the box all right the first thing i want to do is press and hold the power button on the upper right side here to activate our tablet and then we can take a close look around all right so it's going to take a look at our tablet so again this is android 5.0 or lollipop which has a lot of interesting features which we're going to take a look at in this video in fact we can jump to our settings to see android 5.0 right here all right so let's go and take a look at our hardware first now you can see on the front we have these front-facing stereo speakers for htc boom sound up top you'll find a 1.7 megapixel facing camera and an ambient light sensor right next to it now toward the bottom we have the other front facing stereo speaker and our on-screen android keys which again have been updated for android 5.0 now this display is 8.9 inches lcd ips and as you can see here this is more of a 4x3 aspect ratio instead of the widescreen tablets of the nexus 10 and the nexus 7. now on the right side you'll find one of the dual microphones just above the sleepwake power button as well as the volume rockers now these keys are a little small and a little flush so they're not as tactile as i'd like to see but they get the job done now on the bottom you'll find a micro usb charging port and the other dual microphone in the lower corner now although this tablet is mostly plastic there is a metal band that surrounds the tablet's bezel and you can see toward the top just above the speaker grille is just a little separation point kind of filled in with plastic that's the only joint on the entire metal band and right next to that is the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack now that 8 megapixel camera on the back is kind of positioned at the far corner of the tablet and you have this nice mellow surround which kind of raises up out of the beveled corner of the tablet i think this looks really nice it's still flush to the tablet so if you lay this flat on the table it doesn't rock around or anything like that it's just because it's built into this corner this curved corner it kind of sticks out i think it's a nice detail now it's 8 megapixels all the focusing 1080p hd video really nothing remarkable in terms of specs but we do have an led flash right below it now the back panel of course has our nice nexus branding toward the center and we have this nice soft touch rubbery material which feels really nice in the hand adds to the grip ability of the tablet but of course it does show a lot of fingerprints this was true of the nexus 10 the nexus 7 and other devices that features this sort of material design all right so let's go and take a look at our tablet so as you can see we can now double tap the lock screen to wake it up so that's a new feature with android 5.0 now you can see that we can expand our notifications on the lock screen and you can interact with them so you can expand them if you if they're eligible for such a thing such as your email you can also dismiss them by swiping them out of the way and you can scroll them you can also see we have a separate area just for google now cards and you can clear them all if you want you can also launch your camera just by swiping on that icon pretty quickly like so and then we're going to explore the camera in this video now let's just swipe up to get to our home screens here so you can see i have two home screens here and you can swipe all the way to the right to get to google now that's always there but of course you can turn that off if you want now i can also interact with google just by speaking okay google launch youtube now our drop down notification sheet has also been updated here so you can expand notifications or collapse them and as you can see the more you have here the more they kind of stack on top of each other and hide out of the way so if you want to see them all just scroll up again you can see your google now cards are right below it and then you can clear them all by tapping this icon here which is only visible until you scroll all the way up now you can also swipe down again to get to your quick settings so that includes things like your screen brightness which hides the drop down shade until you're done setting it you have your wi-fi and bluetooth toggles as well as a flashlight feature here which is very nice and handy to have and then you have your cast screen options as well as your gps location and airplane mode you can also go up here to jump to your settings panel as you can see the settings panel has also been heavily updated we'll take a look at that in just a moment now if you want to get the quick settings right away just use a two finger swipe down gesture it takes you right to that panel now from your notification shade you can actually tap and hold on one of these notifications to see which app is pushing it then you can go to info to manage how that app behaves so you can block the app you can change its priority that sort of thing now you can see in the upper right corner we have multi-user mode which you can quickly access here so you can see i'm logged in right now and i can add another user so they can log in with their own google account if they want or you can select guest mode so with a guest account they basically have a clean slate here they don't have access to your account they can log in with their account they can modify this change the wallpaper download their own apps take their own photographs and all of it is sandboxed within their own account so again very quick access to that just by going to your dropdown sheet up here and selecting the account you want now you can also do this from the lock screen just tap up here and select the account you want or add a new one now you can modify the home screen by tapping and holding on it you can rearrange your home screen so if you jump this one to the front that is now your main home screen and you can reposition it if you want like so now you can also select one of your android 5.0 wallpapers right here they've added quite a few of them which work well with this new material design of android 5.0 and then you can also add your widgets and there's plenty of them to pick from and again a new and updated interface now if we go to settings this is where we can turn off google now so if you don't want that to show up at all you can turn that off and you can modify the behavior of google now in here as well as well as your notification options we also have our new android keys here with recent apps with a new look here with this sort of stacked card view which you can cycle through and it's again very smooth and fluid so you can tap on this to access your app and you can just swipe them out of the way to dismiss the apps now recent apps also preserves our google search bar up top although it does stop listening when you're looking at recent apps and you can see recent apps actually incorporates multiple windows for certain applications such as settings here so you can see i have four separate windows open for settings and i can quickly jump to them now we also have our home button which you can swipe up to launch into google now which just swipes over to the right in this case and then you have your back button which also behaves in clever ways so for example if you're typing text you now have this down arrow to dismiss the keyboard like so we also have our new app drawer as you can see when you open up it expands out tells you exactly where it's coming from and when you minimize it goes back to the app door icon very nice and of course if you want to drag and drop any one of these apps to the home screen just drag and drop it like so and you can take it up to remove now if you're in the app drawer let's go here you tap and hold on one of these you can take it up to app info which will take you to the app info screen so you can force stop it disable it and see lots of other information now to get to our settings we can swipe down to tap our gear icon takes us right to settings which has been redesigned and it is searchable so for example if you want to search for screen settings just start typing it in or you can start typing display as you can see it takes you right to display it's all very quick so you can see we have wireless and network so that includes wi-fi controls we can see bluetooth data usage and more under more you'll see nfc which you can toggle on and off and of course you can also select your default sms app you also have your vpn controls and your airplane mode under display again all your standard controls such as your brightness level while this is accessible under your quick settings toggles we also have sound and notifications so you can independently control your media volume alarm volume and your notification volume now alternatively you can tap the volume button to control this you can see you can mute your device and go to vibration mode or you can manually select the volume but you can see we have new do not disturb features which is very welcome on stock android so you can see right now with all selected that means you're receiving all your notifications but you can select priority to limit your notifications so right now i can select right here under settings i can select what i want to receive so i can see events and reminders my messages and calls and that sort of thing so i can unselect some of these and i can select the days in which this is active now if you choose a specific date in which this feature is active you can also select specific times of day in which this automatically activates so for example if you go bad at night you can select the specific times here and i actually think the interface here is kind of neat so you can select your hour and then select the exact minute of the day now right now it's selected for indefinitely but i can also limit how long this is active so i can go as few as 15 minutes or as long as eight hours now under none you receive no notifications at all so you can select indefinitely or for eight hours or all the way down to 15 minutes so under storage you can see how much space we're taking up and exactly what type of content is taking that up as well as which user accounts are taking up the space now under battery we can see our complete timeline as well as which apps are taking up the most battery life and you can go up here to enable battery saver mode and you can see exactly what it's going to do when you enable it now as you can see in battery saver mode you get these orange bars at the top and bottom it dials back screen brightness as well as background data and cpu performance to preserve battery life for as long as possible now if you want to go back to normal just go up here to turn it off we also have our apps manager so you can see what's downloaded what's running and pretty much everything we're familiar with on previous versions of android you also have your users so this is where you can manage your guest accounts you can also see we have tap and pay options here as well under personal we have our location so you can see what apps are using your gps location under security you can see we have our screen lock option so you can see swipe pattern pin and password now perhaps the most interesting feature under security is screen pinning which is off by default i've turned it on here so let me show you exactly what this does now this works with recent apps so for example let me go ahead and swipe this out of the way you can see i now have a pin icon on the apps in recent apps so if i select this this app is now pinned if i accept it here so let's go ahead and click start so this means that you are locked to this app you can't exit it you can't interact with the drop down shade or do anything else so this works with any app so you can imagine this is useful for kids so for example if you want to give them netflix and you don't want them to exit it accidentally or do something else with it just lock that up and you're good to go now to exit all you have to do is tap and hold the back and reset apps key and it's deactivated so under system we have date and time settings accessibility and printing as well as about this tablet and as you can see when you swipe up here you get this little animation which actually follows your fingers so kind of a nice detail so if we go to about this tablet we have android 5.0 just keep tapping on that you get to the lollipop logo which you can tap here to change the color you can also tap and hold on it to launch into this flappy bird game now you've heard me refer to material design earlier and that's referring to the new android 5.0 design theme which is based upon creating an interface that has a tangible quality colors have a consistent tone and textures are very subtle but almost look like origami paper so it kind of has this real world tangible feel the other part of this design equation is motion and transition so every action creates a transition that is designed to orientate the user so they know where something is coming from and where it's going instead of just appearing or disappearing out of nowhere you can see this with the way the app drawer expands out or the folders open up and contract or the way things stack on top of each other like recent apps and notifications so this kind of gives you a sense of relativity and hierarchy the transitions are very quick and smooth so this added animation does not get in the way of pure performance now every single google app has been updated for material design right down to the calculator as you can see here the clock app again much broader color simpler design looks very nice you can see our docs app as well again you can see it's kind of a blue theme here and then you can also see that the other google docs apps have been renamed so we now have sheets and slides and again if you tap on that again you can see that green color and we also have our presentation or slides app now our calendar has also been updated here and you can swipe between the different months and you'll get a different sort of material design theme surrounding it now you can also see they've included google fit here for keeping track of your health information which works great with android wear devices you can also see all the play store apps have been updated with new icons and the new interface again taking advantage of material design now one of the biggest changes here is the elimination of the email app which is now integrated into the gmail app so that means you can add imap and pop3 accounts to your gmail app so for example you can see my main account here which i host myself is integrated here and it is an imap account so if you go up here to add an account you can see you can add imap or pop accounts and exchange accounts as well now for the most part most apps do not take advantage of the screen real estate on an android tablet but certainly google apps do so for example if you take a look at the email app when you rotate it to landscape orientation here you can see it adjusts with your email preview on the right side and all your emails on the left side and of course you can see your accounts on the left side as well so again takes better advantage of all that screen all right so let's go and take a look at our camera app so once again we have an eight megapixel camera on the back now the interface is pretty familiar here so you can snap your photo with the shutter release on the right side here so as you can see here takes the photograph and as you can see a little animation on the right side which indicates that the gallery is to the right and you can swipe back to get back to your camera now if you swipe in from the left edge you get to your options so you can see we have photosphere panorama lens blur which basically focuses the subject in the background and blurs the background and then you have video now you can also see that when you bring up this control panel on the left side you get to your settings and there's lots of options under here including resolution so you can change the resolution of the back and front facing camera as well as some other options such as manual exposure controls you can also pinch in and out to zoom in on your scene it's not the quickest and you can also tap anywhere on the scene to change exposure and focus and snap your photograph now let's go and switch to our video mode here and one of the nice features here is that if you're attempting to record video in portrait orientation you get a little nanny reminder here telling you to rotate it back to landscape orientation i wish all devices did this so that's nice so you can start recording your video and you can tap anywhere on the scene to start taking photographs while recording video of course you can also pinch in and out to zoom while recording video although this camera doesn't have optical image stabilization or other interesting tricks like that it does deliver pretty decent results so it's able to do a good job with exposure as well as color accuracy it's also pretty quick although the autofocusing mechanism can be a bit slow it's pretty quick to take a photograph so even if there's motion in your photograph it does a nice job snapping it quickly enough so there is no motion blur now video quality is also pretty good and it does seem to be stabilized with software so i'm able to get pretty smooth 1080p hd video outlets and again it does a pretty decent job with exposure although it does have a tendency to overexpose some scenes now this camera does feature continuous autofocus although it spends a lot of time hunting around trying to find focus and can be very disruptive so while panning around you'll notice it a lot all right guys mike here at the detroit board testing out that front facing camera which is 1.6 megapixels good for 720p hd video with a 2.4 aperture so pretty wide aperture lets a good amount of light in seems to do pretty decent job here and then we also have those dual microphones for dual audio pickup so pretty decent camera overall now if you take a look at our geekbench 3 scores on the nexus 9 you can see it handily beats out the nexus 10 and the nexus 7 it's replacing of course much more modern much more powerful hardware on the inside now this is right up there with the ipad air 2. you can see the single core score actually bests or matches the ipad air 2 although the ipad air 2's multi-core score definitely beats out the nexus 9. now in terms of performance this device is smooth and quick with all those animations with a high frame rate so this device just flies through its operating system that's one of the benefits of stock android it's highly optimized for the hardware it's on so definitely impress overall with the system performance now i have noticed installing here and there sometimes it hangs up so for example i'm bringing up the drop down notification sheet sometimes it freezes or when i'm bringing up an app from the app launcher sometimes it's slow to respond so there can be some hiccups here and there but otherwise this device is smooth and quick now in terms of my battery life i'm able to get about three and a half hours to four hours out of this display at maximum brightness and that's with some gaming involved so that's pretty impressive now of course if you dial back your screen brightness use less processor intensive apps use the camera a bit less and use the power saving mode of course you'll get a lot more mileage out of your battery now once again this display is 8.9 inches with 281 pixels per inch now something like the ipad air is 264 pixels per inch while the ipad mini is at 326 so this kind of slots between the two of them so in either case this is a really sharp high resolution display and it's fairly bright but there are some significant issues and one of them is light bleeding you can see it's evident no matter what you're doing so if you look at the edge of the display you can see there's quite a bit of light bleeding along the edge where the light source is now this is kind of uncommon on higher cost tablets like this one this is kind of a high-end tablet you shouldn't see this too often the other issue is just how uneven that backlight is so for example if you're looking at dark scenes you can see there's uneven light bleeding along the edges especially in one corner of the tablet now this could be a manufacturing issue with my version of the tablet but i have noticed that in other reviews this light bleeding is pretty common and consistent now while the display has its weaknesses these speakers definitely don't this is definitely the best sounding tablet you can get right now with these front facing acc boom sound speakers they're loud and clear with a nice dynamic range so let's go ahead and play a sample video to get an idea of how it sounds yes you are yes you you are have to decide between seeing your children again and the future of the human race who we always have now in the end the nexus 9 does have a few strengths and weaknesses in terms of its strengths one of my favorite is its overall size i think it's the perfect size for a tablet it's not too big it's not too small and it makes the keyboard very comfortable to handle in any orientation it's also got pretty decent cameras on the back and front and it's really nice to have an led flash built into the back and we have fantastic audio thanks to those htc boom sound front-facing stereo speakers which makes us one of the best sounding tablets out there now in terms of weak points it comes down to the display and the build and construction of the tablet now this feels like a budget tablet with soft flexible materials on the back which for me creak and pop and flex in strange ways which generally doesn't feel very nice and then the edges are kind of sharp and the angular doesn't feel as nice to handle as i'd like to see but for me the biggest weak point of this tablet is going to be the display while it's sharp and bright with excellent color reproduction it does have excessive light bleeding with uneven back lighting so generally speaking this is not what i expect to see on the tablet that costs 400 to 500 dollars like a lot of competing tablets which do a much better job with their displays but in the end if you're a hardcore fan of android 5.0 and stock android there really is no better tablet option out there right now alright guys so that's gonna do for me in this video hope you enjoyed it thanks for watching and i'll see you again in the next onewhat's up guys mike here the detroit board with a look at the new htc nexus 9 which is google's new flagship tablet for 2014 launching with android 5.0 or lollipop which is a major redesign of the os which we're going to take a look at in this video so this retails for 3.99 for 16 gigs or 479 for 32 gigs so this is no longer a budget tablet like the nexus 7 and nexus 10 it's replacing this kind of fits between those two tablets with an 8.9 inch display so it's kind of filling the gap between both of them and does deliver some pretty high end specs so we have an 8.9 inch lcd ips panel with a resolution of 1536 by 2048 which is good for 281 pixels per inch we also have an 8 megapixel camera on the back with an led flash a 1.7 megapixel camera on the front along with htc boom sound stereo speaker so that's front facing stereo speakers which is welcome on any tablet we also have a 6700 milliamp hour internal battery which is non-removable and we have lots of other features like 802.11 ac wi-fi nfc technology as well as bluetooth 4.1 now currently we have two gigs of ram we have a dual core 2.3 gigahertz nvidia tegra k1 with 64-bit processing and a kepler dx1 gpu with 192 cores yes 192 cores on the gpu all right so let's go and crack into our packaging here which is pretty minimal you just have the nine embossed on the front and the nexus 6 packaging is also identical just kind of flip it around and shrink it down you get an idea what the nexus 6 packaging is like of course i will be reviewing the nexus 6 in the future video so you can see we have these bands surrounding the packaging to keep it sealed up so we're going to slice that to get into it so let's go ahead and do that right now all right so let's go ahead and lift the lid very easy and there we go there we have our tablet tucked into its packaging cradle here it's going to pull it up and there we go so we can see our tablet wrapped in plastic nexus on the back just says nexus not nexus 9 or anything like that and as you can see this is the indigo black back panel so let's go and peel off this wrapper there we go slides right out got that nice soft touch back panel very similar in feel to the nexus 5 and or the black nexus 5 and the nexus 7 the black nexus 7. it's kind of soft touch rubbery material all right we're going to take a really close look at this in just a moment we just want to clear the contents here to see what else they include so we have our nexus branding here then we have some paperwork here very nicely done so you can see we have our basic information tells us about nfc or power button vine buttons that sort of thing very basic warranty safety guide then we have our standard accessories like a power adapter so this is a pretty standard 5 volt charger that you would get on any other htc product with the htc branding and the usb port at the top and then we have a standard htc usb 2.0 cable which is pretty nicely designed with the curved edges now in the back of the tablet you'll find that serial number sticker that is easily removed and of course once you remove it you probably are going to throw it out so they do keep the spares in the box all right the first thing i want to do is press and hold the power button on the upper right side here to activate our tablet and then we can take a close look around all right so it's going to take a look at our tablet so again this is android 5.0 or lollipop which has a lot of interesting features which we're going to take a look at in this video in fact we can jump to our settings to see android 5.0 right here all right so let's go and take a look at our hardware first now you can see on the front we have these front-facing stereo speakers for htc boom sound up top you'll find a 1.7 megapixel facing camera and an ambient light sensor right next to it now toward the bottom we have the other front facing stereo speaker and our on-screen android keys which again have been updated for android 5.0 now this display is 8.9 inches lcd ips and as you can see here this is more of a 4x3 aspect ratio instead of the widescreen tablets of the nexus 10 and the nexus 7. now on the right side you'll find one of the dual microphones just above the sleepwake power button as well as the volume rockers now these keys are a little small and a little flush so they're not as tactile as i'd like to see but they get the job done now on the bottom you'll find a micro usb charging port and the other dual microphone in the lower corner now although this tablet is mostly plastic there is a metal band that surrounds the tablet's bezel and you can see toward the top just above the speaker grille is just a little separation point kind of filled in with plastic that's the only joint on the entire metal band and right next to that is the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack now that 8 megapixel camera on the back is kind of positioned at the far corner of the tablet and you have this nice mellow surround which kind of raises up out of the beveled corner of the tablet i think this looks really nice it's still flush to the tablet so if you lay this flat on the table it doesn't rock around or anything like that it's just because it's built into this corner this curved corner it kind of sticks out i think it's a nice detail now it's 8 megapixels all the focusing 1080p hd video really nothing remarkable in terms of specs but we do have an led flash right below it now the back panel of course has our nice nexus branding toward the center and we have this nice soft touch rubbery material which feels really nice in the hand adds to the grip ability of the tablet but of course it does show a lot of fingerprints this was true of the nexus 10 the nexus 7 and other devices that features this sort of material design all right so let's go and take a look at our tablet so as you can see we can now double tap the lock screen to wake it up so that's a new feature with android 5.0 now you can see that we can expand our notifications on the lock screen and you can interact with them so you can expand them if you if they're eligible for such a thing such as your email you can also dismiss them by swiping them out of the way and you can scroll them you can also see we have a separate area just for google now cards and you can clear them all if you want you can also launch your camera just by swiping on that icon pretty quickly like so and then we're going to explore the camera in this video now let's just swipe up to get to our home screens here so you can see i have two home screens here and you can swipe all the way to the right to get to google now that's always there but of course you can turn that off if you want now i can also interact with google just by speaking okay google launch youtube now our drop down notification sheet has also been updated here so you can expand notifications or collapse them and as you can see the more you have here the more they kind of stack on top of each other and hide out of the way so if you want to see them all just scroll up again you can see your google now cards are right below it and then you can clear them all by tapping this icon here which is only visible until you scroll all the way up now you can also swipe down again to get to your quick settings so that includes things like your screen brightness which hides the drop down shade until you're done setting it you have your wi-fi and bluetooth toggles as well as a flashlight feature here which is very nice and handy to have and then you have your cast screen options as well as your gps location and airplane mode you can also go up here to jump to your settings panel as you can see the settings panel has also been heavily updated we'll take a look at that in just a moment now if you want to get the quick settings right away just use a two finger swipe down gesture it takes you right to that panel now from your notification shade you can actually tap and hold on one of these notifications to see which app is pushing it then you can go to info to manage how that app behaves so you can block the app you can change its priority that sort of thing now you can see in the upper right corner we have multi-user mode which you can quickly access here so you can see i'm logged in right now and i can add another user so they can log in with their own google account if they want or you can select guest mode so with a guest account they basically have a clean slate here they don't have access to your account they can log in with their account they can modify this change the wallpaper download their own apps take their own photographs and all of it is sandboxed within their own account so again very quick access to that just by going to your dropdown sheet up here and selecting the account you want now you can also do this from the lock screen just tap up here and select the account you want or add a new one now you can modify the home screen by tapping and holding on it you can rearrange your home screen so if you jump this one to the front that is now your main home screen and you can reposition it if you want like so now you can also select one of your android 5.0 wallpapers right here they've added quite a few of them which work well with this new material design of android 5.0 and then you can also add your widgets and there's plenty of them to pick from and again a new and updated interface now if we go to settings this is where we can turn off google now so if you don't want that to show up at all you can turn that off and you can modify the behavior of google now in here as well as well as your notification options we also have our new android keys here with recent apps with a new look here with this sort of stacked card view which you can cycle through and it's again very smooth and fluid so you can tap on this to access your app and you can just swipe them out of the way to dismiss the apps now recent apps also preserves our google search bar up top although it does stop listening when you're looking at recent apps and you can see recent apps actually incorporates multiple windows for certain applications such as settings here so you can see i have four separate windows open for settings and i can quickly jump to them now we also have our home button which you can swipe up to launch into google now which just swipes over to the right in this case and then you have your back button which also behaves in clever ways so for example if you're typing text you now have this down arrow to dismiss the keyboard like so we also have our new app drawer as you can see when you open up it expands out tells you exactly where it's coming from and when you minimize it goes back to the app door icon very nice and of course if you want to drag and drop any one of these apps to the home screen just drag and drop it like so and you can take it up to remove now if you're in the app drawer let's go here you tap and hold on one of these you can take it up to app info which will take you to the app info screen so you can force stop it disable it and see lots of other information now to get to our settings we can swipe down to tap our gear icon takes us right to settings which has been redesigned and it is searchable so for example if you want to search for screen settings just start typing it in or you can start typing display as you can see it takes you right to display it's all very quick so you can see we have wireless and network so that includes wi-fi controls we can see bluetooth data usage and more under more you'll see nfc which you can toggle on and off and of course you can also select your default sms app you also have your vpn controls and your airplane mode under display again all your standard controls such as your brightness level while this is accessible under your quick settings toggles we also have sound and notifications so you can independently control your media volume alarm volume and your notification volume now alternatively you can tap the volume button to control this you can see you can mute your device and go to vibration mode or you can manually select the volume but you can see we have new do not disturb features which is very welcome on stock android so you can see right now with all selected that means you're receiving all your notifications but you can select priority to limit your notifications so right now i can select right here under settings i can select what i want to receive so i can see events and reminders my messages and calls and that sort of thing so i can unselect some of these and i can select the days in which this is active now if you choose a specific date in which this feature is active you can also select specific times of day in which this automatically activates so for example if you go bad at night you can select the specific times here and i actually think the interface here is kind of neat so you can select your hour and then select the exact minute of the day now right now it's selected for indefinitely but i can also limit how long this is active so i can go as few as 15 minutes or as long as eight hours now under none you receive no notifications at all so you can select indefinitely or for eight hours or all the way down to 15 minutes so under storage you can see how much space we're taking up and exactly what type of content is taking that up as well as which user accounts are taking up the space now under battery we can see our complete timeline as well as which apps are taking up the most battery life and you can go up here to enable battery saver mode and you can see exactly what it's going to do when you enable it now as you can see in battery saver mode you get these orange bars at the top and bottom it dials back screen brightness as well as background data and cpu performance to preserve battery life for as long as possible now if you want to go back to normal just go up here to turn it off we also have our apps manager so you can see what's downloaded what's running and pretty much everything we're familiar with on previous versions of android you also have your users so this is where you can manage your guest accounts you can also see we have tap and pay options here as well under personal we have our location so you can see what apps are using your gps location under security you can see we have our screen lock option so you can see swipe pattern pin and password now perhaps the most interesting feature under security is screen pinning which is off by default i've turned it on here so let me show you exactly what this does now this works with recent apps so for example let me go ahead and swipe this out of the way you can see i now have a pin icon on the apps in recent apps so if i select this this app is now pinned if i accept it here so let's go ahead and click start so this means that you are locked to this app you can't exit it you can't interact with the drop down shade or do anything else so this works with any app so you can imagine this is useful for kids so for example if you want to give them netflix and you don't want them to exit it accidentally or do something else with it just lock that up and you're good to go now to exit all you have to do is tap and hold the back and reset apps key and it's deactivated so under system we have date and time settings accessibility and printing as well as about this tablet and as you can see when you swipe up here you get this little animation which actually follows your fingers so kind of a nice detail so if we go to about this tablet we have android 5.0 just keep tapping on that you get to the lollipop logo which you can tap here to change the color you can also tap and hold on it to launch into this flappy bird game now you've heard me refer to material design earlier and that's referring to the new android 5.0 design theme which is based upon creating an interface that has a tangible quality colors have a consistent tone and textures are very subtle but almost look like origami paper so it kind of has this real world tangible feel the other part of this design equation is motion and transition so every action creates a transition that is designed to orientate the user so they know where something is coming from and where it's going instead of just appearing or disappearing out of nowhere you can see this with the way the app drawer expands out or the folders open up and contract or the way things stack on top of each other like recent apps and notifications so this kind of gives you a sense of relativity and hierarchy the transitions are very quick and smooth so this added animation does not get in the way of pure performance now every single google app has been updated for material design right down to the calculator as you can see here the clock app again much broader color simpler design looks very nice you can see our docs app as well again you can see it's kind of a blue theme here and then you can also see that the other google docs apps have been renamed so we now have sheets and slides and again if you tap on that again you can see that green color and we also have our presentation or slides app now our calendar has also been updated here and you can swipe between the different months and you'll get a different sort of material design theme surrounding it now you can also see they've included google fit here for keeping track of your health information which works great with android wear devices you can also see all the play store apps have been updated with new icons and the new interface again taking advantage of material design now one of the biggest changes here is the elimination of the email app which is now integrated into the gmail app so that means you can add imap and pop3 accounts to your gmail app so for example you can see my main account here which i host myself is integrated here and it is an imap account so if you go up here to add an account you can see you can add imap or pop accounts and exchange accounts as well now for the most part most apps do not take advantage of the screen real estate on an android tablet but certainly google apps do so for example if you take a look at the email app when you rotate it to landscape orientation here you can see it adjusts with your email preview on the right side and all your emails on the left side and of course you can see your accounts on the left side as well so again takes better advantage of all that screen all right so let's go and take a look at our camera app so once again we have an eight megapixel camera on the back now the interface is pretty familiar here so you can snap your photo with the shutter release on the right side here so as you can see here takes the photograph and as you can see a little animation on the right side which indicates that the gallery is to the right and you can swipe back to get back to your camera now if you swipe in from the left edge you get to your options so you can see we have photosphere panorama lens blur which basically focuses the subject in the background and blurs the background and then you have video now you can also see that when you bring up this control panel on the left side you get to your settings and there's lots of options under here including resolution so you can change the resolution of the back and front facing camera as well as some other options such as manual exposure controls you can also pinch in and out to zoom in on your scene it's not the quickest and you can also tap anywhere on the scene to change exposure and focus and snap your photograph now let's go and switch to our video mode here and one of the nice features here is that if you're attempting to record video in portrait orientation you get a little nanny reminder here telling you to rotate it back to landscape orientation i wish all devices did this so that's nice so you can start recording your video and you can tap anywhere on the scene to start taking photographs while recording video of course you can also pinch in and out to zoom while recording video although this camera doesn't have optical image stabilization or other interesting tricks like that it does deliver pretty decent results so it's able to do a good job with exposure as well as color accuracy it's also pretty quick although the autofocusing mechanism can be a bit slow it's pretty quick to take a photograph so even if there's motion in your photograph it does a nice job snapping it quickly enough so there is no motion blur now video quality is also pretty good and it does seem to be stabilized with software so i'm able to get pretty smooth 1080p hd video outlets and again it does a pretty decent job with exposure although it does have a tendency to overexpose some scenes now this camera does feature continuous autofocus although it spends a lot of time hunting around trying to find focus and can be very disruptive so while panning around you'll notice it a lot all right guys mike here at the detroit board testing out that front facing camera which is 1.6 megapixels good for 720p hd video with a 2.4 aperture so pretty wide aperture lets a good amount of light in seems to do pretty decent job here and then we also have those dual microphones for dual audio pickup so pretty decent camera overall now if you take a look at our geekbench 3 scores on the nexus 9 you can see it handily beats out the nexus 10 and the nexus 7 it's replacing of course much more modern much more powerful hardware on the inside now this is right up there with the ipad air 2. you can see the single core score actually bests or matches the ipad air 2 although the ipad air 2's multi-core score definitely beats out the nexus 9. now in terms of performance this device is smooth and quick with all those animations with a high frame rate so this device just flies through its operating system that's one of the benefits of stock android it's highly optimized for the hardware it's on so definitely impress overall with the system performance now i have noticed installing here and there sometimes it hangs up so for example i'm bringing up the drop down notification sheet sometimes it freezes or when i'm bringing up an app from the app launcher sometimes it's slow to respond so there can be some hiccups here and there but otherwise this device is smooth and quick now in terms of my battery life i'm able to get about three and a half hours to four hours out of this display at maximum brightness and that's with some gaming involved so that's pretty impressive now of course if you dial back your screen brightness use less processor intensive apps use the camera a bit less and use the power saving mode of course you'll get a lot more mileage out of your battery now once again this display is 8.9 inches with 281 pixels per inch now something like the ipad air is 264 pixels per inch while the ipad mini is at 326 so this kind of slots between the two of them so in either case this is a really sharp high resolution display and it's fairly bright but there are some significant issues and one of them is light bleeding you can see it's evident no matter what you're doing so if you look at the edge of the display you can see there's quite a bit of light bleeding along the edge where the light source is now this is kind of uncommon on higher cost tablets like this one this is kind of a high-end tablet you shouldn't see this too often the other issue is just how uneven that backlight is so for example if you're looking at dark scenes you can see there's uneven light bleeding along the edges especially in one corner of the tablet now this could be a manufacturing issue with my version of the tablet but i have noticed that in other reviews this light bleeding is pretty common and consistent now while the display has its weaknesses these speakers definitely don't this is definitely the best sounding tablet you can get right now with these front facing acc boom sound speakers they're loud and clear with a nice dynamic range so let's go ahead and play a sample video to get an idea of how it sounds yes you are yes you you are have to decide between seeing your children again and the future of the human race who we always have now in the end the nexus 9 does have a few strengths and weaknesses in terms of its strengths one of my favorite is its overall size i think it's the perfect size for a tablet it's not too big it's not too small and it makes the keyboard very comfortable to handle in any orientation it's also got pretty decent cameras on the back and front and it's really nice to have an led flash built into the back and we have fantastic audio thanks to those htc boom sound front-facing stereo speakers which makes us one of the best sounding tablets out there now in terms of weak points it comes down to the display and the build and construction of the tablet now this feels like a budget tablet with soft flexible materials on the back which for me creak and pop and flex in strange ways which generally doesn't feel very nice and then the edges are kind of sharp and the angular doesn't feel as nice to handle as i'd like to see but for me the biggest weak point of this tablet is going to be the display while it's sharp and bright with excellent color reproduction it does have excessive light bleeding with uneven back lighting so generally speaking this is not what i expect to see on the tablet that costs 400 to 500 dollars like a lot of competing tablets which do a much better job with their displays but in the end if you're a hardcore fan of android 5.0 and stock android there really is no better tablet option out there right now alright guys so that's gonna do for me in this video hope you enjoyed it thanks for watching and i'll see you again in the next one\n"