Google Nexus 9: Preliminary Findings
by Joshua Ho on November 3, 2014 1:00 PM ESTCPU Performance
While there’s a great deal of ground to cover on the tablet as a whole, one of the most interesting aspects of the Nexus 9 is the SoC. While we’ve tested Tegra K1 before, we were looking at the more traditional Cortex A15 variant. The Denver variant (Tegra13x) is mostly similar to Tegra K1-32 (Tegra12x), but instead the CPU cores are a radically different design. In order to get an idea for how this translates into real world we can look at a few of our standard benchmarks in this area, although Google Octane couldn’t complete a full run. This build of Android clearly has AArch64 active, which means that we should be able to directly compare the Nexus 9 to the iPad Air 2 for performance.
As one can see, at least at this stage in development the Nexus 9 can show some level of promise at times, but can be a bit disappointing in others. In SunSpider, Denver is generally even slower than Krait. However, in a benchmark like Kraken the Nexus 9 easily pulls ahead to take the top spot. In Basemark OS II the Nexus 9 does well overall but this seems to be due to its graphics performance/GPU performance and storage performance rather than CPU-bound tests like the system and web tests. It seems that when the code morphing systems works as expected, Denver can deliver significant amounts of performance. However, when such code morphing falls flat its true performance with a dual core, 2.3 GHz configuration is around that of a four Krait core CPU system at similar clock speeds. Once again, it's important to emphasize that this build is far from complete so performance should improve across the board with launch software. The fact that Tegra13x can approach A8X in CPU performance in some tests is definitely interesting to see.
Battery Life
While Denver's performance is a bit mixed, it's worth taking a look at battery life to see how Denver performs in these areas. As always, our battery life tests are all run with the display calibrated to 200 nits.
While an early build, it seems that the Nexus 9 is reasonably competitive in battery life but I'm not sure that these results are perfectly accurate. At any rate, efficiency at this stage seems to be par for the course, which should bode well for shipping software. This is a mostly display-bound test though, so we'll look at Basemark OS II to get a better idea for compute-bound battery life.
As one can see, while the battery life of the Nexus 9 ends up on the bottom for phablets and tablets, the overall performance during the test is quite high. We're working on a better comparison for the final review, but this should give a good idea of what to expect in general.
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nodecodiver - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
Been playing with mine all morning. I don't really see the performance issues everyone is talking about. My "Recent Screens" button does not take 2-3 seconds to pop up, it's quite responsive, actually. I'm not a huge gamer, so I can't comment there, but just in general use as a media consumption device / large screen mobile browser / productivity device, I couldn't be happier.Liveartonline - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
As a side note, anyone care to explain to me why Samsung Galaxy Tab S routinely scores worse than the Tab Pro even though they are pushing the same number of pixels? Based on the graphs, Samsung's own Exynos 5420/Mali-T628 combo is inferior to last year's SD800+Adreno 330?toyotabedzrock - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
What is with the sunspider regression? It seems to indicate the need for further code optimization. Perhaps try chrome beta and update the firmware. Ars had the newer firmware for their review.nodecodiver - Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - link
Google said a while back they could basically care less about Sunspider because it's a poor representation of actual web browsing, which, any extended use of Safari vs. Chrome (on a droid) bears out. There is no appreciable difference in the web experience on either device, although I prefer Chrome just for the universal tabs, etc.raghwendra123 - Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - link
What I don't understand is how is Basemark OS II graphics score double that of ipad air 2 yet its performs almost the same in offsceen benchmarks?kf27fix - Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - link
AnandTech should start testing interface responsiveness quantitatively. E.g. when I swipe or click, I want the device to react instantaneously - 200 milliseconds is way too long, I need 1 millisecond. A high-speed camera and a piece of software to analyse the video recording should do the trick.In my opinion, this is the main difference between Apple and Android world. I always feel almost ashamed when I use my Android phone next to someone with an iPhone. My phone seems to always do something important in the background exactly when I need it to do something for me fast.
Desusenam - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
100% agree with the principle of this test. I've definitely noticed my Note 3 a bit laggy at time. I expect the device to work for my needs and not the other way around. I also like the idea of doing some 'real world' tests with a whole load of apps open, various browser tabs open, then switch tasks, ring the phone etc. and check responsiveness. However, maybe I would have same issue with Apple.tipoo - Sunday, November 9, 2014 - link
You "need" 1, I assume you don't use any touch devices? I think ~47 was the fastest tested, the One M8 being one of the fastest.lucam - Thursday, November 6, 2014 - link
When is it going to happen to have the complete recension of both devices for having a clear idea? I think preliminary results in this article only cause flames between users. Bit disappointed by Anand sincerely.Desusenam - Friday, November 7, 2014 - link
I purchased one for my daughter which we received on Tuesday, previously she had an iPad 2, three and a half years ago.She's happy with it (it plays games and videos and surfs the internet etc.) and I don't need to install iTunes. So, a win-win situation.
HOWEVER, we still cant buy ANY cover for it on Google Play.
WTFlip is that about. Everyone here is talking about what SOC and how many cores and blah blah, but they can't even sort out the cover for the device.
I had the same issue last year with the 7 inch Nvidea tablet. Launched and we couldn't buy the great cover that was designed for it.
So, in this regards Apple wins by a long way. The iPad 2 was engraved on the back for free and it arrived with the cover at the same time the iPad came.
By the way, the cover protects the screen and allows you to stand the tablet up etc. to watch movies. Pretty essential for most people I would think... (and yes, I know I could get a generic cover or put it in a paper bag or something but really, I would like the cover designed for the device that gets advertised...)