First Look Review: Nexus 6, Nexus 9 and Player Lollipops

Google invited some journalists to a location near its New York office today to look at its new Nexus products. On display were the Nexus 6, Player and 9 with plenty of accessories. I asked some questions, I took some notes I played around a little bit.

The Player:

• You’ve seen the video and there wasn’t anything new on display though I have to say the Material Graphics looked great on what I believe was at least a 70-inch display
• I talked to the product manager who told me that some of Google TV devices would be upgradable to Player. It was up to the OEM and hardware specs. I imagine Sony among others will update some of their products. I’m not as sure about the other “players”.
• Sony is again all in on Android Player all of their Smart TVs and set boxes (outside of Playstation) will be Players
• Many more OEM announcements will be coming at CES (we’ll be there!)

The Nexus 6:

• Damn, is this thing big. It is Galaxy Mega big. But in a world where there is a 5.5-inch iPhone, this is the new normal.
• As big as it is, it feels good in hand and definitely not heavy for its size. Motorola always has build quality.
• The #1 question for me was the camera. We were in a basement space so there wasn’t opportunity to take pictures with it outside but I looked on the demo unit roll and there were some amazing pictures from Maine on there. Blow away quality here. As good as anything I’ve ever seen. The one downside was that the shots I was taking in the room, there was the shortest of lags that was still noticeable with the Android Camera app, especially when the camera was first invoked. I’m not sure how bad this was. Video with the steady cam also looked eerily good. We’ll have a better informed opinion in our full review.
• Lollipop *popped* the interface and all of the loaded apps were very fluid, no lag at all. I don’t think there are going to be power issues with this thing.
• Overall, it feels very comfortable and new. The default keyboard goes without lines which is a bit jarring but overall very familiar, yet beautiful and new.

Nexus 9:

• Right up front, I don’t think this is going to be super successful. It is a *nice* tablet and fast and it runs Lollpop smoothly but in a world where Apple is seeing sagging numbers in tablet sales, I don’t think this is going to get very far.
• The keyboard case is a little bit sloppy. It wraps around the whole device instead of hooking in like a Surface or iPad. The keyboard looks to be about 90% size.
• The cover case is also magnetic and slips off a bit easier than Apple’s cases.
• You origami the cover to make a stand but again magnets don’t feel super strong here.
• The hardware is great, the screen is beautiful and the sound is best in class. However with a pocketable version with a not so terribly smaller sized screen, it isn’t immediately apparent why I’m drooling over this thing. Maybe it will grow on me?
• That being said, this is by far the best Android tablet I’ve ever used and gives the iPad Air a credible challenge.

Like I said, we’ll have full reviews of each item in the coming weeks. I’m very excited overall.  Stay tuned.