What's the consensus on how to improve lag/slowness?

Much like Phil, I am getting super frustrated by the lagginess and slowness of the N7 after I updated to 4.2.1 OTA. What's the general consensus of the community for those that had similar experiences on the best way to fix it? Should I download and restore a complete factory image? Try a new kernel?

Any advice & suggestions are much appreciated!

Go back to 4.1? Was that not choppy? I bought mine with 4.2.1, and assumed it was how this tablet runs but it has been annoying me a bit. Would love a solution that does not involve a custom ROM.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

+1 for 4.1.2 if you don't absolutely need 4.2.1. Other than that, yes a custom ROM will be your best bet. I'm using a beta of Minco v.6.1 and it's not laggy at all.