Asus MeMO Pad HD 7 Gives Cheap Tablets a Good Name

What's This?

By Stewart Wolpin2013-08-08 19:25:00 UTC

Mashable Choice highlights the products and services we've tested and would recommend to others. Consider it Liked, Favorited, +1'ed and Pinned.

You're forgiven if you've never heard of or are only vaguely familiar with the Taiwanese bargain computer maker Asus (or, technically, ASUSTeK, or just ASUS). But if you're in the market for an inexpensive 7-inch tablet, you may want to increase your passing familiarity with the company and check out its MeMO Pad HD 7, a step-up from the Asus MeMO Pad 7.

For just $150, the Asus MeMO Pad HD 7 is packed with a productive plethora of hardware features, high-end specs and easy-to-access widgets. And for those bored of basic black and white, MeMO is available in multiple colors (dark blue, lime green and reddish-pink).

See also: Facebook Home: Everything You Need to Know

With all its positive points, however, MeMO's enclosure may seem a bit cheap.

But let's start on the plus side.

Superior Specs for the Price

Inside the MeMO HD7 is a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, not exactly state of the art when most top-of-the-line tabs boast at least 1.4-1.7GHz engines. But this slightly slower processor performance is the same found in Samsung's more expensive Tab 3 7.0 ($200); more on this comparison in a bit.

The speed difference between the MeMO and its more powerful/more expensive counterparts is barely detectable in standard functions such as app booting and Web page rendering only when doing side-by-side speed tests — and we're talking a second or two either way — and really only affects more sophisticated functions such as graphics-heavy gaming. Most average users who just want to surf the web, play Angry Birds or Words With Friends, watch a movie or read a book won't detect any functional deficiencies.

Aside from the average processor, MeMO has superior specs to other higher-priced competitors, particularly the aforementioned Samsung Tab 3 7.0. For instance, MeMO's display offers 1,280 x 800 resolution, a 5-megapixel rear camera and 16GB of storage compared to the Samsung's 1,024 x 600 display, 3MP rear camera and 8GB of storage.

The Slightly Odd Case of the Case

You know how you take the top off a box and put it on the bottom creating a lip around the bottom of the box? That's sort of how the MeMO is built — the plastic underside extends a centimeter or so beyond the top, creating this top-on-the-bottom-like lip around the MeMO.

This mismatched top and bottom make the MeMO feel as if it were assembled from spare parts, like the Asus couldn't be bothered to create matching tops and bottoms and weld them semi-seamlessly together.

The negative effect of this lip is nearly all aesthetic; its edge isn't sharp enough to cause any grip discomfort. But instead of the on/off and volume toggle buttons being located on the side of the MeMO, they're located on the drastically tapered rear, practically underneath the tab, and require slightly more effort to find by feel.

MeMO's microSD card also is located on the sloped side on the left, which makes it a bit more challenging than necessary to insert and extricate those tiny memory cards.

A bigger concern is the MeMO's lack of fingerprint protection. Every digit you lay on the MeMO leaves a telltale smudge or print, and dust particles seem to preternaturally collect on its surface. Once the screen is lit these smudges and specs are rendered nearly invisible, but when the screen is off — well, it looks as if you've left damning evidence for the CSI team (see the photo below).

Performance

MeMO's 1,280 x 800 display resolution means the MeMO does not offer full HD (1080p) playback, which makes little or no difference on a 7-inch tablet. Unless you're watching movies with a jeweler's loupe, there's no way to detect the pixel difference between this and a 1080p display on a screen this small.

Speaking of video, MeMO's LCD screen displays accurate, natural colors, and its IPS (in-plane switching) provides a wider viewing angle than many of its competitors, which means you don't have to maintain a specific viewing angle for optimum viewing.

MeMO's display also provides 221 pixels per inch (ppi) — more than the 170 ppi on the Samsung Tab 3 7.0 and iPad Mini's 163 ppi. As a result, you'll be able to discern the small headlines on full HTML Web pages such as on CNN's home page that would just be blurry squiggles on screens with lower ppi.

What MeMO's screen gives, its speaker gives away. It's a mystery why tablet designers think locating speaker(s) on the rear is a good idea — it's actually just plain stupid. Plus Asus says MeMO's single slit rear speaker is stereo, which is patently absurd. Sure, the speaker may include stereo drivers, but "stereo" requires the two speakers be spaced apart so you get different signals to each ear. To get any decent volume to just one ear, especially to hear dialogue, you have to cup your palm around the speaker.

This silly speaker placement also renders moot Asus' SonicMaster audio technology, which lets you choose different EQs for music, movies, gaming, speech and recording.

MeMO's 5MP camera must include some sort of image stabilization because images don't blur with the slightest movement as you snap the shot. But indoor photos have a reddish tinge to them and, without a flash, are dark even in brightly lit environments. As with most new tablets, the front 1.2MP camera can capture 720p HD video.

Perhaps MeMO's most impressive technical achievement is its battery life — I milked more than 10 hours of video and active use out of it, an hour or more than most other tablets, even pricier ones.

Widget Extras

Aside from physical and hardware specs, Asus supplies some handy widgets and an easy way to get at them.

Beneath the active display area are four navigation touch controls: the usual Home and Back keys, along with what looks like a double arrow key and an icon comprised of two tiled squares. Touching the latter provides a list of all recently accessed apps, a handy way to toggle between operations.

The former double-arrow touch control key displays something Asus calls Floating Apps — an opaque 1.5-inch-tall row of widgets and apps. MeMO's preloaded with system widgets including a calculator, stopwatch and a unit converter, but you can choose from around 40, including Google bookmarks, email, YouTube, The Huffington Post and Zinio.

You can easily add or remove widgets to your heart's content. More importantly, the Floating Apps pop-up makes these functions far more accessible than if you had to constantly locate them in Android's Apps screens.

Asus also supplies 16GB of free cloud-based storage for any files on the MeMO. Photos can be automatically uploaded to the company's WebStorage service. From there, you can access them via software for Windows or Mac PCs, or an app for any Android or Windows Phone 8 device. WebStorage makes it easy to get photos and videos (which have to be separately uploaded) off the MeMO to where they can be accessed, viewed, shared and downloaded.

Nice Pad

MeMO's specs don't match those of more expensive Android tabs such as the highly touted new Asus-made Nexus 7 ($230), which offers a 1.5GHz processor, 1,920 x 1,200 pixel display (323 ppi) and NFC, but lacks a microSD card slot for added storage and lasts only "up to 9 hours of active use."

Nonetheless, MeMO fulfills the normal, everyday things you'd want to do on a tablet without muss or fuss and sans arguably extraneous functions and features. It's just too bad Asus forgot about fingerprints in creating this fine, value-filled Pad.

The Lowdown

What’s Good

What’s Bad

Images: Mashable, Stewart Wolpin

Topics: Asus, Gadgets, Mashable Choice, MeMO Pad, Mobile, reviews, Tech