Review: Nexus 9

Originally I just wanted a Nexus 6. After a year and change with a Sony, I’d decided Android is better off with something close to stock. But this time around they announced the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 together, so I got carried away and bought both. The Nexus 6 is still on a plane; the Nexus 9 arrived a week ago. Here’s roughly how it went.

I bought straight from the Google Play store. Lots of people say that if the credit card billing address you register with Google Wallet doesn’t match the forwarding company’s receiving address, Google will cancel your order — and that Google cancels orders like a maniac. From what I can tell, most of those people had never had a Google Wallet account, maybe not even a Google account. They rushed to sign up through some temporary proxy just to buy a Nexus, then rushed to place an order, so of course Google figured them for scalpers or a sketchy account.

So basically: if you’ve bought things with Google Wallet before, or you’ve had a Google account for ages, Google will let the billing-address thing slide. Mine went through fine.

Google Play doesn’t ship directly. You can buy the Nexus 9 from Amazon with direct shipping, but there’s $70 in tax, so forwarding is cheaper. I used Benniao (笨鸟海淘) as the forwarder — partly because I couldn’t get registered with 转运中国, and the other forwarders were either backed up or banned electronics. Benniao was just okay, honestly. Not what I’d call fast: 25 days from shipment to delivery. Four of those days were bad luck landing on a weekend when they’re closed, so I had to wait until Monday for shipping and customs to continue.

I got the 32GB black version. Forwarding cost 70 RMB, and customs hit me for 200 RMB on the electronics. Work out the total yourself if you care.

After nearly a week of use, some impressions:

1. For me, 7 inches is too small and 10 is too big. 9 is just right, and with the 4:3 screen it feels great to hold and read on.

2. Battery life is clearly better than the Nexus 7 and the Nexus 7 II I’ve messed with (never bought one). Mostly reading and browsing, a day of moderate use leaves about 50%. Leave it sitting there all day and it’ll have even more left. It’s getting close to iPad Air territory.

3. Android 5.0 Lollipop changes a lot, but it does feel like a decent step up from KitKat — immersive mode, snappier response. One thing for this tablet: do not install apps from the three poison companies, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent). Having them on your phone is enough. They don’t support multi-device login anyway, and even if you install them and never open them they’ll chew through your RAM and battery.

4. The screen and reading experience are excellent. I used to open web pages on the Surface or read Tiny Tiny RSS on my phone; the Nexus 9 is a lot more comfortable. Browsing forums is no problem at all.

5. The Nexus 9 uses Nvidia’s K1 chip. It doesn’t feel hot. Some licensed anime on Niconico can’t be hardware-decoded, but the sources that do decode use very little power, and even software decoding is acceptable.

6. Most of what I’ve run into so far are system bugs: the keyboard sometimes won’t come up, some Chinese apps crash for no reason, going back to the home screen randomly restarts the launcher. The fix is either hunting for a beta build on the app’s dev forum or waiting for an update.

7. Plug in headphones and you can hear a faint electrical hiss.

8. It has a camera and a flash, but the photos are… meh.

9. Double-tap to wake works. No need to keep pressing the power button — thumbs up.

10. Some Android apps, including Google’s own — Google+ for example — still have no real plan for font and interface sizing on a tablet like this. Some areas are cramped, some text is huge. That’s just how it is after Android fragmented.

11. Google says the Nexus 9 supports rapid charging, but in practice, if you’re using it while plugged in, it basically doesn’t charge. Maybe because I’m not using the official charger.

All in all, for an Android tablet, I think the Nexus 9 is pretty good. Compared with the various slabs I’ve used before, the stock system plus the 4:3 screen and the solid battery life at least meet the basic requirement of “pick it up when you want it, leave it lying around without worrying it’ll die.” The Nexus 6 should arrive next week — we’ll see if it has any new surprises.