Google tablet has eyes on Apple

It's the question consumers ask most about any new tech gadget: "Should I get this now, or is something better coming along soon?"

For buyers of Amazon's Kindle Fire, we now have the answer: You should have waited.

Google's new Nexus 7 is aimed directly at the Kindle Fire, the 7-inch color tablet that was the runaway hit last holiday season. The Nexus 7 obliterates every reason for buying the current Kindle and sets a high bar for whatever Amazon comes up with to replace it.

The Nexus 7 is Google's first foray into selling a tablet under its own brand. It costs $199 for a model with 8 gigabytes of storage, same as the Kindle, or $249 for 16 gigabytes.

At 7.8 inches tall and 4.7 inches wide, the Nexus 7 is compact enough to slide into a jacket pocket. A rubbery, textured back makes it easy to grip. Like the Kindle Fire, it works only over a Wi-Fi connection; while the screens are the same size, the Nexus 7's has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, compared with the Kindle Fire's 1024 x 600.

The Google tablet also has a more powerful, quad-core processor, twice the internal memory and better battery. At four-tenths of an inch thick and 12 ounces, it's also thinner and 18 percent lighter.

Go down the list of standard tablet features, and the Nexus 7 wins every one. Camera? None for the Kindle; the Nexus has a front-facing camera and microphone for video calls.

GPS? Yes on the Nexus, along with a newly enhanced Google app that lets you save maps for use even when you're offline. The Kindle has nothing like it.

The Kindle has the Nexus beat in one significant area: the depth and breadth of the online stores designed to keep them stuffed with content. The Kindle is deeply integrated with Amazon's shops for e-books, music, movies and videos, which are far richer than the sparsely stocked Google Play store.

On the other hand, Amazon makes an excellent free app that allows you to buy and read Kindle e-books on the Nexus 7. There's always Netflix for movies and Spotify for music, among others.

The Nexus 7 marks the debut of yet another iteration of the Android operating system: version 4.1, which Google calls "Jelly Bean." Google's constant Android updates can be maddening for consumers, who often find that even recently purchased devices won't run the latest software.

Still, this new version is the most polished yet. It's fast and smooth, without any of the herky-jerkiness in reorienting the device from landscape to portrait, or in transitions from one screen to another, that afflicted earlier releases.