The Nexus 7, the highly-anticipated Android tablet by Google was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

The 7-inch tablet, considered the biggest rival to Apple's iPad, began shipping in the UK and is expected to arrive in stores in the United States in the next week.

Staples has a pre-order listing for the tablet on its website, promising that the Nexus 7 will be delivered sometime between July 12th and the 17th, according to Slash Gear. Staples is offering bonuses to the pre-order such as a $25 credit to spend on Google Play, Google's Android market, free content and a copy of "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" movie.

The Wall Street Journal featured a review of the device in an article titled, "From Google, The Toughest Challenge To iPad." Writer Walter S. Mossberg wrote that after testing the device for a few weeks he considered it "the best Android tablet I've used."

"It's a serious alternative to both Apple's larger $499 iPad and to a more direct rival: Amazon's $199, Android-based, 7-inch Kindle Fire," he wrote. "I prefer the Nexus 7 to 7-inch models from Google partners like Samsung, whose comparable product costs $250."

Mossberg's review includes highlights of the device, stating that its artificial-intelligence feature is comparable to Apple's Siri. "It answers some spoken questions, like Siri does...and a screen, called Google Now, with information it considers relevant to you at your present location and time-like the weather, traffic conditions between home and work, your next calendar appointment, and information for flights you've been researching."

The writer compared the battery life of the Nexus 7 to Amazon's Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad: "In my test, the battery life of the Nexus 7 exceeded the Fire's by a huge margin: nearly five hours. It's the first tablet I've tested that beats the iPad in my standard battery test. It lasted over 10 hours, about 45 minutes more than the latest iPad."

Mossberg also noted the biggest drawbacks of the Nexus 7: "The new Google tablet doesn't have all the features of the iPad. For instance, it lacks a cellular connectivity option, a rear camera and the iPad's dazzling screen resolution. Its base model has half the memory of the iPad's. It offers fewer content choices-music, movies, TV shows-than either the Apple or Amazon devices do. It also has very few apps designed for a tablet, as opposed to a phone, while the iPad boasts over 200,000 apps for tablet use. And its screen area is less than half the size of the iPad's."

The Nexus 7 comes with a 7-inch 1280×800 IPS display, NVIDIA's quad-core Tegra 3 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, all for $199. A 16GB version is also available for $249. 

Initial shipments will be confined to the US, Canada, UK and Australia.

Tags: Apple ipad Nexus 7 staples