Design: The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is a smooth slab of brushed aluminum around a wide, 4.1-inch touch screen. Only a couple of buttons break the surface, a three-way Escape, Switch, and Home key and a 5-way navigational button. A kickstand swings out from the bottom and places the device at about a 45-degree angle on a tabletop. Near the top, the back swells to allow for a VGA camera on a retractable stalk that pops out from the side and swivels to face the viewer, or you can twist it 180 degrees around back. Under the kickstand, you'll find a mini-USB port, and the first of two SD card slots. The second slot -- yes, you read that right -- is under the battery cover, but completely accessible and hot swappable. They can each take a 2GB card, or up to 4GB together, although with SDHC cards reaching 32GB and beyond, we wonder why Nokia didn't opt for a one-car garage.
Web Browsing - Very good
The Web browsing experience on the N800 is excellent, better than on any mobile phone we've tested -- which is good, given that this isn't a mobile phone. That said, the surfing on the N800 isn't quite as good an experience as it is on our three-year-old Mac PowerBook. The Nokia's Opera browser can open any page, including video-rich YouTube and Google Video, stopping just short of the online batch organization features on Flickr, which it couldn't handle. Videos didn't play smoothly, which was a disappointment for such a large, wide-screened device. The video stuttered, running only a few frames per second, even though the sound usually came through clean. Complicated textual sites were no problem; The New York Times homepage, for example, looked exactly as it does on our laptop. Pages loaded quickly while surfing an open Wi-Fi network, and at a satisfying clip over a Bluetooth DUN connection. Over Wi-Fi, we had problems connecting to the WPA-protected network in our office, but our WEP network at home gave us no problems. For dial-up networking, the N800 found our Palm Treo 700p easily and fired up a connection without incident. Navigating the browser was simple; the tablet lets you pan by dragging the page with your stylus or finger. Though text was legible at tiny sizes, we would have preferred better access to the oft-used zoom feature, which was unfortunately tucked under some menu layers. The N800's RSS reader may not be as feature-rich as Google Reader, but it's clean and uncluttered, and it is handily accessible from the home screen in its own widget-like applet.
Our favorites: Fast-loading pages and easy panning by fingertip
Our request: YouTube support would be much better if the videos streamed smoothly
Multimedia - Good
With a couple of SD card slots, you'd expect some powerful sideloaded media features on the N800, but while it is capable of playing a nice range of files, the tablet's media experience is ultimately disappointing. The player itself is bare -- a white background with generic-looking blue text and icons. AVI and MPEG4 files looked clean, with no stuttering compared to their online counterparts, though we did see some artifacts and pixilation, especially on the fast-moving scenes in our "Mission: Impossible" clip. The device accepts normal headphones in its 3.5mm jack, and includes a set of headphones with a microphone for calls over Google Talk. Since our friends use Skype and iChat, we weren't able to test the N800's VoIP feature, but Nokia tells us that Skype compatibility will arrive later this year. Plenty of software is available for the N800, thanks to the Linux underpinnings of its Internet Tablet OS, but we were disappointed by the lack of bundled apps. We were especially bummed that the N800 doesn't come with a PC software suite for transferring files, music and tunes; instead, you'll have to drag-and-drop using Windows Explorer on your desktop.
Our favorites: AVI support means the tablet is taking Internet video seriously
Our request: A seamless, all-around media experience, from transfer to playback, to compete with iPhone
Messaging - Good
Without phone capabilities, don't expect SMS or MMS, but instant messaging is available for Jabber users, and e-mail is there if you have a POP3 or IMAP account. Jabber is an open-source IM network, which means Yahoo, MSN and AIM fans will have to start fresh. Also, we would have liked to see a more streamlined approach to e-mail. A few preset server names for some of the more popular e-mail carriers isn't too much to ask, is it? Typing on N800 is probably one of the coolest aspects of the device. When you tap a text field with your stylus, you get a small keyboard on screen. If you jab it with your finger, a much larger, finger-sized keyboard pops up. We enjoyed tapping away with the larger, comfortable keyboard, and we almost never found ourselves mistyping an address or contact name. The only complaint we had about typing on the N800 was that the keyboard obscures all but a small text field, although there's still enough on-screen text to help you remember what you started typing.
Our favorite: The large, on-screen keyboard is fun to use
Our request: Support for other IM protocols, pre-loaded account information for popular e-mail accounts
Odds and ends
Besides its obvious lack of cellular radio capabilities -- yes, we know the N800 isn't meant to be a phone, but finding wide-open Wi-Fi networks on the road isn't so easy these days -- there are a few other key features missing from Nokia's new tablet. A GPS radio would be a clever match for this device, which already has a large touch-screen and a powerful processor. Upcoming Skype support is nice, but Slingbox support would be even better. A2DP for stereo Bluetooth would be a natural fit, and would improve the sub-par media experience. Finally, the interface would be greatly improved for new users if Nokia would simply label buttons, or allow some sort of mouse-over technique to discern their functions. Eventually, we caught on, but the learning curve was a bit steep.
