Joined: Aug 2010
Posts: 12,727
Likes: 2,105
From: Madison, WI
Bikes: 1961 Ideor, 1966 Perfekt 3 Speed AB Hub, 1994 Bridgestone MB-6, 2006 Airnimal Joey, 2009 Thorn Sherpa, 2013 Thorn Nomad MkII, 2015 VO Pass Hunter, 2017 Lynskey Backroad, 2017 Raleigh Gran Prix, 1980s Bianchi Mixte on a trainer. Others are now gone.
I do not have a Nexus, instead I have a 7 inch Android tablet from one of the Chinese manufacturers that sell inexpensive tablets. Mine does not have GPS. I carried it on a 500 mile tour to have as a wi fi device during the trip for news/e-mail and to use for reading for two days of train travel.
I had no problems. That said, since I was not using it during the day (no GPS) like you would be, I carried it in a neoprene foam sleeve and put that (along with cables, chargers, etc.) in a plastic box to protect it from being crushed which could damage the glass screen inside the panniers. I think I paid $0.69 (on sale) for the plastic box from Walgreens, was sold in school supply area as a student pencil box. I think you need to worry more about crushing it and cracking the screen when packed than you need to worry about vibration. Never used it where it might get wet, no comment on that, my panniers are waterproof.
I can't comment on the screen visibility in the sun, but my Android smartphone is very hard to see on a sunny day. Battery life on the smartphone is terrible when the screen is on, but if I have the screen off and wi fi off so that it only is taking GPS readings but not showing the result on the screen the battery life is not that bad. I assume an Android tablet with GPS would be comparable for battery consumption. I do not have a cell plan or data plan for my smartphone, so no power is consumed for those tasks. The GPS apps that I am happiest with are:
- Maps With Me Lite (free).
- Russian Military Maps Pro (about $11 USD). (I use the open source cycle map layer.)
- GPS Test (free).
A couple weeks ago I bought a Garmin 62S on sale at REI. It was still on sale as of yesterday. Uses AA batteries that would likely be quite useful if you were away from a power source for several days. I loaded a bunch of maps onto a Micro SD card from the web and will load topo maps for where I go from Garmin Mapsource 1:100k USA topo maps which I bought several years ago.
I have a 9 year old Garmin Legend and a Vista, black and white screens, very old by today standards with tiny memory capacity. The 62S replaced them for trips where I need more map memory, but I might still use the old GPS units when I do not need the memory for maps.
I think you need to worry about how you would keep a tablet charged if you use it much as a GPS away from power supplies.