How many times have you ordered a newly announced device to have it ship to you mid-week but miss the Friday cutoff time for delivery by a mere couple of hours? For me that has happened every single time I have purchased from Google, except today. The out for delivery notification I received from Package Tracker Pro was only topped by the Hangouts message from my wife letting me know it had just been delivered. My 4:30pm knock-off time could not come fast enough.
Upon opening the box I was presented with a clean and classy white Nexus 9 box, a nice departure from the boxes of the last couple of years. Upon opening the box you are presented with the back of the Nexus 9 (white in my case). The usual plastic around the tablet didn’t last very long. My first impression of the tablet was a good one. I was surprised by the colour of it, expecting it to be white. To me it is more “whiteish”. The white is maybe more of an off-white, a dirty white. Maybe our esteemed editor, aka Pigpen may regret not getting the white version in case he got it dirty.
I have seen some people complain about how flush the buttons are but I don’t see this at all. The buttons are easily pressable and in my opinion should not stick out too far for aesthetic purposes. HTC have done a great job designing this tablet with it being a thing of beauty. The front facing speakers are becoming a HTC signature in their devices.
The back does seem to have a bit of flex in it, although I am not testing that too hard for fear of breaking a brand new, expensive device. I think it is more of a function of the back cover being soft but I don’t see it as a problem going forward.
The screen is just amazing. The colours are really vibrant as to be expected by a display from HTC. The size of it will take some getting used to. It is a lot bigger than the Nexus 7 screen but I expect that will just take a bit of getting used to, just as stepping up from a 5in phone display to a 5.5in display did.
The camera is just a camera. It’s a tablet camera, so don’t expect much. The indoor photos I took were not the sharpest, nor the best lit photos I have ever taken. I never expect much from a tablet camera so not overly disappointed here. People who do expect to take decent photos with a tablet are living in lala land in my opinion.
Lollipop runs amazingly well on it, as you would expect, being the first new device to run a full version of Lollipop out of the box. There was an update of around 280MB before I could even sign in so I would suggest not attempting to set it up before you have wifi access.
All in all, my first impressions of the Nexus 9 are all good. Purchasing it is something I do not regret a single bit. My only issue now is to whom do I pass my Nexus 7 on to.
