Ten apps to install on your Nexus 7 first

Take your media tablet beyond Google

TuneIn Radio Pro

Video may have killed the radio star but TuneIn Radio puts life back in the old dog. The app gives you access to over 60,000 internet radio stations and two million on-demand programmes, with content divided into music, news, sports and talk radio and then subdivided by genre to help you more easily find what you are after. You can also look for content by location or language.

Once you've launched a station you can swipe the Now Playing screen to see other stations offering similar genre content, an options screen that lets you select from all the available stream formats and bitrates as well as a daily running order if such is available.

Another recent addition is a Twitter feed relating to the station you are listening too assuming it has a Twitter handle. Stations can be easily added to a favourites list which can then be synced between all your devices and the TuneIn web portal. You can also buy tracks from Amazon or record directly off air and donate to listener-supported stations.

Reg Rating 85%
Price £0.61
Size 164MB
Google Play Download

VPlayer

If all you want to do is watch movies rented from Google or your own H.264 files then the standard Nexus 7 video player will do the job, but if you want to watch anything using less common codecs and file containers or with subtitles then you are going to need a video player that is a little more capable. Until VLC gets its woefully unstable Android beta sorted out, I’d suggest VPlayer.

The latest version has brought hardware accelerated decoding and rendering to MKV, AVI (DivX/Xvid), QuickTime, FLV, TS, M4V and 3GP files which should keep the vast majority of film buffs satisfied and reduce battery drain. It will also play 1080p files with dismissive ease, supports near enough every audio codec known to man, all common subtitle formats plus a few I’ve never heard off, and can it handle streamed content. The pinch-to-zoom feature is pretty cool too.

If you want to try it out the app is yours free for seven days after which you’ll need to buy the £1.99 unlocker. But that's a very small price to pay.

Reg Rating 90%
Price Free for 7 days then £1.99
Size 14MB
Google Play Download