The Asus MeMO Pad 8 ME181C is an Android tablet with an 8 inch display, an Intel Atom Bay Trail processor, and a $199 price tag.

It’s also a surprisingly powerful machine for the price. Or maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise: after all the tablet has the same processor as the Asus Transformer Pad T100 — a 10 inch Windows tablet that can basically replace a laptop.

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Still, the MeMO Pad ME181 feels zippy, has no problem running any app I’ve thrown at it, and costs less than a Google Nexus 7 or Amazon Kindle HDX.

Does that make the Asus MeMO Pad a must-buy? That depends. Some folks may be underwhelmed by the screen resolution, amount of RAM, or other specs. The ZenUI software Asus piles on top of Google Android could also be a turn-off for some, although it does add a few handy features. Asus also offers a 7 inch model with similar specs for $50 less.

Still, there’s a lot to like about the Asus MeMO Pad 8, and I’ve enjoyed using it for the past few weeks while working on this review.

Overview

Asus has been making Android tablets for years and even designed the Nexus 7 tablets with Google in 2012 and 2013. Up until recently most of the company’s tablets have been powered by ARM-based processors.

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In mid-2014 Asus launched a series of tablets with Intel Atom Bay Trail-T processors including the MeMO Pad 7, MeMO Pad 8, and Transformer Pad TF103. These are all priced as mid-range tablets and they lack some of the features you’ll find in more expensive models such as full HD displays. But based on my tests, Intel’s quad-core Atom chip is more than fast enough to handle just about anything you can throw at it. We’ll delve into a bit more detail in the performance section below.

The Asus MeMO Pad 8 has a 1280 x 800 pixel, 400 nit IPS display with wide viewing angles, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a microSD card slot.

It has a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and support for Miracast wireless display support, and Android 4.4 KitKat software with the Asus ZenUI user interface and suite of apps.

Design

The tablet comes in black or white, and the case features rounded corners, relatively thin bezels on the sides of the screen and slightly thicker bezels at the top and bottom.

It measures 8.5″ x 5.4″ x 0.33″ and weighs about 0.7 ounces. It’s not quite as pocket-sized as some 7 inch tablets, but given the right pair of jeans you can probably stuff the tablet in your back pocket while you walk around the house (I wouldn’t recommend leaving the house with the tablet in that pocket… or sitting down with it there, for that matter).

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The tablet has stereo speakers which are reasonably loud for a device this small. But both speakers are positioned along one edge which means that you’ll be hard pressed to notice a stereo effect if you’re holding the tablet in landscape mode. The speakers also face the back of the tablet, so you may end up covering them with your hand while holding the device.

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On the right side of the tablet you’ll find power and volume buttons. The power button is below the volume keys, which I find a little disconcerting since I’m used to the Nexus 7 which has a power button on top. But assuming you don’t plan on using a whole bunch of tablets in your household you should have no problem getting used to the button layout.

There’s a microSD card slot on the other side of the tablet and the headset and microUSB charging ports are at the top.

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There are cameras on the back and front of the tablet, and the rear camera features auto-focus support. But neither camera has an LED flash.

One basic feature that’s missing from the MeMO Pad 8 is an ambient light sensor. You can adjust the brightness manually by using a slider in the Quick Settings panel, but it’s a bit disconcerting to encounter Android apps like the Amazon Kindle app which have a check-box for “auto brightness” on a device which can’t actually support the feature.

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Software

Asus ships the MeMO Pad 8 with Android 4.4 KitKat and it comes with the Google Play Store. You’ll be hard pressed to find any Android apps that won’t run on this tablet.

But it also features the Asus ZenUI experience which means that it has a custom app launcher, settings menu, Quick Setting and Notification panels, and a few custom apps. Some of those features are useful. Others… not so much.

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I’m not generally a fan of custom skins for Android since they have a habit of creating an inconsistent user experience as you flip between apps that were designed to match Google’s design guidelines and apps and menus that were developed by Asus (or HTC, or Samsung, or whoever). But there are a few things to like about ZenUI.

m8 quick settings_02For one thing, the Quick Settings pull-down panel is customizable. Don’t need to toggle auto-sync or auto-rotate very often? Just uncheck their boxes from the Quick Settings options. Unfortunately there’s no way to change the list of always-present apps in the panel which means you’ll always see Camera, Calculator, Quick Memo, and Sound Recorder icons… whether you use these apps or not.

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The Asus app launcher is also kind of nice. It looks a lot like the stock Android app launcher, but there are tabs for All apps, Downloaded apps (which you’ve installed yourself), and Frequent for the apps you use most often.

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The tablet includes an Asus Keyboard app instead of Google’s keyboard. It has a dedicated row of numbers above the letter keys, auto-suggests words as you type, and works reasonably well for entering text. If you’d prefer an alternate keyboard such as Swype, SwiftKey, or even the Google Kelyboard you can always install one from the Google Play Store.

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Asus includes a camera app that has a few nice features including an anti-shake option. But the front and rear cameras on the MeMO Pad 8 aren’t all that good… and no software’s going to change that. Don’t throw out your DSLR just yet.

m8 asus apps

Other apps include a custom calculator, a Power Saver app, an Asus Web browser (the tablet also comes with Google Chrome) and third-party apps including Zinio, Flipboard, Amazon Kindle, and eMusic… because who doesn’t love a little bloatware?

Sadly, there’s no way to remove apps that come pre-loaded on the tablet unless you root your device, but at least you can disable them so they won’t show up in your app launcher.

Performance

A few years ago there were many apps that simply wouldn’t run on an Android tablet with an Intel processor. These days a tablet like the MeMO Pad 8 can run the vast majority of Android apps — even those that weren’t originally designed for x86 chips. While apps that have to be translated may run a tad slower and use a little more battery life, the difference is negligible — and the most important thing is that you’d have to look pretty hard to find an app that you can’t run on this tablet. I didn’t encounter any at all during my tests.

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Intel’s Atom Z3745 is a 1.33 GHz quad-core Bay Trail processor that launched in 2013. While many of the first devices to use this chip were Windows-powered tablets, Intel has been pushing its Bay Trail chips as solutions for Android tablets as well… and the MeMO Pad 8 is just one of several Android tablets Asus has launched this summer that feature the chip.

So how does a tablet with Intel’s chip stack up against one with an ARM-based processor? Pretty well.

I ran a few benchmarks and it scored 33,703 in Antutu and 13,473 in 3DMark Ice Storm. For comparison, the Google Nexus 7 (2013) tablet with a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor scored 20,383 in Antutu and 10,337 in 3DMark.

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Benchmarks don’t always paint a complete picture, but after using the tablet for a few weeks these results don’t surprise me. The MeMO Pad 8 feels pretty zippy, boots and loads apps quickly, and never struggles with games, HD video playback, or other common tasks.

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Not only does the Asus MeMO Pad outperform the 2013 Google Nexus 7 in all of the benchmarks I ran, it gets similarly long battery life and standby time. That’s despite the fact that the Nexus 7 has a $229 list price and 2GB of RAM compared with the MeMO Pad 8’s $199 price tag and 1GB of RAM.

The Nexus 7 does have a higher-resolution display, automatic screen brightness, front-facing speakers, dual-band WiFi, and performance that’s still plenty fast. So if I were going to choose between the two tablets, I’d probably choose the Nexus 7 — especially since you can often find it on sale for far below the list price.

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But it’s noteworthy that an Intel Atom-based tablet is so competitive. It’s also worth noting that Asus offers a 7 inch MeMO Pad 7 with the same processor and nearly identical specs (but lower-resolution cameras) for $150.

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The tablet’s IPS display has wide viewing angles and I never felt like I had to hold the tablet at a specific angle in order to see images or videos clearly. While some fans of high-res displays might dismiss this tablet because it doesn’t have at least a full HD screen, most of the time I could barely tell the difference between the 1280 x 800 pixel display on the MeMO Pad 8 and the 1920 x 1200 pixel display on my Nexus 7.

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Asus says the MeMO Pad 8 should get up to 9 hours of run time thanks to its 15.2 Whr battery. I never tried using the tablet for 9 hours at a stretch, but I regularly used it to read eBooks or surf the web for a few hours, put it down for a day or two, and picked it up to use some more without it running out of juice. 9 hours certainly seems plausible.

Verdict

The Asus MeMO Pad 8 ME181C tablet offers solid performance and a reasonably low price tag. While it doesn’t have a full HD display or a high quality camera, I don’t think either of those things are must-have features for an 8 inch tablet that sells for under $200.

On the other hand, it’s a bit disappointing that the tablet lacks an ambient light sensor and while the Asus ZenUI software has a few nice features I generally prefer Android without any custom skins.

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But while I’d probably still recommend a Nexus 7 (2013) over the MeMO Pad 8, this tablet shows that Intel has essentially caught up with ARM-based chip makers in the low-power, high-performance mobile processor space. If the Nexus 7 didn’t exist, I would have no problem recommending this tablet instead.

In fact, knowing that Asus offers a 7 inch model for $50 cheaper, I find myself kind of wanting to recommend that model even though I haven’t had a chance to test it myself. If the MeMO Pad 7 ME176C  offers the same level of performance as the MeMO Pad 8, it’d be a steal at $150 or less.

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36 replies on “Asus MeMO Pad 8 Android tablet review”

  1. Just ordered my Asus 8 and have been using Asus for the last two years.
    I use my Asus Tab 4 (I think its called) for FB, Twitter and a few other Social Networking sites. I really like the one I’m using right now but anxious for my 8 to arrive.

  2. OK, I don’t have the memo pad 8, but I do have the memo pad7; with a even less remarkable camera. The have the same specs other than the camera. First about the mico usb port being tight, yes it is; but I’ve not had any trouble with mine. Second I picked mine up from Tiger Direct on a special price of $124 with free shipping. I needed a tablet for some programming I was doing and this was the most cost effective for something I “might” use in the future. I am truly blown away by the screen and performance of this tablet. I loaded over ninty apps onto it the day after it arrived, two apps would not load because Play Store said they’re not compatible. But other than that I have yet to find anything this tablet won’t run. I actually runs several basic apps faster than my i5 core laptop; with a SSD and 6 GB of ram. ASUS has just updated the OS for the third time in two months, and I understand that it will be updated to lollipop. When it first arrived I could not load apps to the SDHC card, after calls to Asus which got me no-where. A week later the update fixed that issue. I’m not a big fan of skins over stock android; but the Zen UI from asus never seems to get in my way, and some of their “bloatware” is actually useful; which is way more than I can say for Samsung. I actually use the tablet so much that I’m ordering the me181 (memo pad 8), the only problem is that probably won’t fit in my jacket pocket. I’ve worked in IT for over 25 years, I’m over 50 y.o. and this is the second electronic pocket device I wouldn’t leave home without, besides my phone. The first was a Nino PDA. I say all that because I’m not NEW to computers, I’ve been into computers since before the first PC. And I get called on a lot to “advise” on system purchases. The Nvidia is the best tablet out there, but nothing in this price range can match the Memo pads performance.

  3. I just got the 7 model last week. The charging
    port is extremely tight, and it takes a lot of force to put it in the connector
    for charging and take it out. I am concerned that I might pull the connector
    jack off of the circuit board or otherwise damage the circuit board. Has anyone
    else experienced this very tight port with this tablet?

    1. ditto. have just had to put back a memo pad 7 to the shop due to damaging the usb connection because of the fit. going to risk another one but worried this will happen again

  4. Brad, would you reccomend this over the EVGA Tegra Note 7? It seems to match or beat this tablet in almost every category: Better performance, pressure sensitive direct stylus, front facing speakers, better rear camera, HDR, stock android with frequent updates, and cost.

    1. I told you … You should wait for one of THESE …. 😉

      https://www.asus.com/Tablets/ASUS_MeMO_Pad_ME581CL/

      The ME181 has a mere “Bay Trail” processor that was never intended as a tablet SOC. It was designed as a netbook chip to kill AMD at the low end (where its actually doing pretty well).

      ME581 uses “Moorefield” which has a proper GPU and is cheaper to make. Its 7 inch cousin was certified by the FCC last week

      https://tabtec.com/android/asus-tablet-intel-moorefield-spotted-fcc-database/

        1. You don’t know that because the engadget review contains NO DATA on the ME581.

          So how did you reach that ‘most categories’ conclusion… huh??

          1. It had a chart of benchmark figures. I took them at their word that this was a preview of the named device. My note 7 beats all of the benchmark results. And it gets 10 hours of video playback.

          2. Show me this “chart of benchmark figures” in a review labelled “not yet scored”.

          3. Check out the chart here. It’s not hard to find: you click on the “Read the full review”.

            https://www.engadget.com/2014/08/01/asus-memo-pad-7-and-8-review/?ncid=rss_truncated

            And yes, my Tegra Note 7 beats almost all the provided scores as illustrated here: https://www.engadget.com/2013/11/12/nvidia-tegra-note-7-review/

            And here is the chart using data from the same review staff:

            Quadrant 2.0 Intel:19,495 TN:16,066 Ratio:82%
            Vellamo 2.0 Intel:1,933 TN:3,314 Ratio:171%
            SunSpider 1.0.2 (ms)* Intel:607 TN:586 104%
            3DMark IS Unlimited 14,171 16,473 120%
            CF-Bench 22,284 34,386 154%

            Edit: the PCPer numbers for the Note 7 are *way* out of line with what others have seen. They must have had it on “battery-saving” mode when doing performance testing.

            So out of 5 tests, the *latest* Intel processor loses to a Tegra 4. Pretty good for a year old SoC. Now compare that with the K1, where the CPU ~33% better than the T4 (thus beating the Intel in most if not all benchmarks) and kicks the GPU performance up 2.5x.

            When you go back to whimper in your corner about this, remember to rock back and forth. It might help you feel better.

          4. Quadrant, Vellamo SunSpider and 3DMarkIS all contain elements of GPU test and THIS IS NOT ABOUT GPUs (yet).

            Quadrant contains a GPU test
            Vellamo 2 MAY contain a GPU test
            Sunspider is a javascript test so it may involve the GPU.
            3dmark IS unlimited contains a GPU test.
            CF bench is an unvalidated “enthusiast” benchmark that always barfs on X86 devices.

            So congratulations … by ignoring a benchmark set you don’t like and by and using the WRONG benchmarks on the WRONG device you can prove you were RIGHT !! Do you feel better now??

            You want another review ?? Have another review …

            https://www.anandtech.com/show/7508/nvidia-tegra-note-7-review/4

            Of the six CPU tests where both TN7 and a silvermont part are tested the score is 3:3 and each has an “outlier” where it is spanked by the other.

            Which supports WHAT I SAID AT THE START … that these CPUs (Quad core Silvermont and a quad-core A15) offer approximately equivalent performance.

            Lets wait 1 month for the Quad Core “Moorefield” part, shall we 😉

            https://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/35446-intel-moorefield-tablet-stops-by-fcc

          5. I didn’t cherry pick. I reported all the benchmarks provided by Engadget that coincided. If anyone is guilty of cherry picking, it is you: the pcper benchmark results were way out of line with with Tegra Note 7 results that everyone else – including Anandtech – were reporting. And while the quad core Tegra 4 might be matched by the Silvermont, the K1 runs about a third faster in CPU and 2.5x in GPU.

            As for this being the “wrong” device, well I concede that even though they provide the model number explicitly in the Engadget review that they may be confused. I am curious to see if anything develops in the future. I hear Intel has been slipping schedules, but I don’t follow them like you do.

            As for my original premise – that a TN7 is a better choice then this tablet – I still thinks that holds true for the reasons already detailed above. And if you want ultimate performance in a shipping tablet, there is the Shield tablet with the K1.

            I am curious to see the performance of this Moorefield part and this tablet as you say it should be when it ships. Please let me know when that happens and feel free to gloat if warranted 🙂

          6. So when I show you a review of both devices and call out the results that are relevant to the discussion (which is “CPU performance”) … Thats “Cherry Picking” .

            But when you select results from two different reviews done at different times and call out results that mostly AREN’T relevant to the discusson … Thats NOT “Cherry Picking”.

            What drives you people huh??? What colour is the f**king sky in your world??
            I hope to God you never appear as a witness in a court of law.

            And I’ve never made any assertions about either this ME181 thing orTN7 except to summarise some earlier CPU tests. I really don’t care if either of them smells of aubergines.

          7. Recall my opening question: “Brad, would you recommend this over the EVGA Tegra Note 7?”

            When did this discussion *ever* become only about CPU only? Perhaps CPU perf is all *you* wanted to discuss because Intel sucks in every other category like ISP, GPU, Stylus system, etc. That’s cherry picking.

            And you selected the absolute worst results for the TN7 that were way out of line with numerous other reputable reviews. That’s cherry picking too.

            The tablet reviewed here is already inferior to the 9-month-old TN7. Expect to pick one up in the BigLots discount aisle any day now. As for your mythical Broadwell part, well I guess will need to continue to wait and see.

            Reimagining the subject of this thread, swearing, and using multiple quotation marks make you appear like an uneducated, myopic narcissist. We wouldn’t want to give people that impression, would we?

          8. Because I wrote :

            “And just for the record: The PREVIOUS generation of Asus 7 inch Bay Trail tablet beats the Tegra Note 7 in ALL CPU tests in this review and has better battery life…. Just sayin'”

            That’s when it became a CPU only discussion.

            And then YOU started introducing whole SOC benchmarks to attempt to prove the superiority of your chosen trinket over a different trinket that wasn’t the thing you were supposed to be commenting on in the first place.

            And I reserve my swearing for people who attempt to draw crude childish images of others gibbering a rocking in a corner … which was entirely uncalled for… MATE!

          9. Sorry I hurt your feeling about rocking in the corner – it was perhaps a bad joke – I didn’t think you would take it so personal. But the discussion became CPU specific only in your mind. In fact, I consider that cherry picking. From the very start, my interest was in overall value as a product compared to the TN7.

            Also, your source for the supposed “better” CPU-bound tests is way, way out of line with others. Take Sunspider, where PCPer is reporting ~1100ms, whereas Anand reports ~550ms for the TN7. According almost everyone else (and my own testing), the TN7 CPU performance is at least as good as the tablet reviewed here. And the GPU and just about everything else is better on the TN7.

            In any event, we will see how the broadwell part stacks up once it makes it to market.

          10. “at least as good as the tablet reviewed here”

            That is EXACTLY my point in all our exchanges… There is nothing special about the CPU parts of either the Tegra4 or the TK1 or any of the much-vaunted A15 or A57 derivatives from Qualcomm, Nvidia or Apple and once Intel gets its “GPU sh*t” together with its “modem sh*t” all these SOCs will be in the same commodity basket. And there is nothing ARM or the fabless outfits can do about that apart from make prettier powerpoint slides…

            Sure, there’a tweak here and there like the TK1 is on a new process that allows it to run faster and Apple “optimised” their A7 so much that it looks great in an IPad but it has a “glass jaw” and won’t do anything else very well. Also, everyone is getting better at “thermal optmisation” and then claims their core technology has gotten better – Think “AMD Mullins”
            The new Shield Tablet is a masterpiece of thermal optimisation.

            There are too many CPU design teams on earth and very soon there will be a shake-out.
            ARM … unlikely – they will retreat to a shed in Norfolk.
            Samsung Exynos …. probably
            Nvidia … If they don’t find another “niche”.
            AMD X86 … Probably next for the chop
            Apple … sometime after they’ve burned their egos and $90B
            Intel … If they suffer 10 years of financial loss.

          11. That is an interesting angle. Let’s assume the CPU part is the “hard” technology and that all this other the other technologies like GPU, DSP, DirectStylus, and Modem are relatively easy for Intel to achieve. If this is true, Intel should own the Market, right?

            Maybe. Even with that premise remember that the x86 architecture is hiding behind a huge process advantage – yet here we see a Silvermont 22nm core being beaten by a 28nm arm core. Remember, Silvermont was supposed to “crush” ARM? (See https://www.extremetech.com/computing/155082-intels-silvermont-revealed-after-a-five-year-snooze-intel-is-finally-ready-to-crush-arm). Didn’t happen probably because x86 inefficiencies offset the process advantage. Maybe Broadwell will fix that with what, another process bump to *half* the node size (14nm)?

            Let’s continue with the premise that the CPU is the “hard” part. If so, one advantage is that x86 has legacy windows applications that make it intrinsically more valuable than other architectures. But Windows and other x86-specific apps are fading fast. Android Linux is now the world’s most popular OS, and apps are moving to the Web. The proliferation of OSS and ARM kernel support means that many key apps are readily available. Ubuntu and LibreOffice run extremely well on my Jetson TK1. If a nimrod thinks he needs office to do “real work” that can be accomplished through a web app. In conclusion, the unholy trinity of x86/windows/office is rapidly falling apart. IMO, that can’t happen soon enough.

            So even if the CPU is the hard part, x86 isn’t guaranteed success. And if the other parts ARE hard, then Intel has a much harder slog. Both Intel and NVidia discovered that modems in the US are hard due to QCs monopoly on CDMA. Thanks to patent royalties, even when QC loses, they win. But Intel can’t beat QC because they use the same anti-competitive IP tools and tactics as Intel does to maintain its x86 monopoly.

            And the GPU is arguably even more important than the CPU or modem on a tablet (modem wins on phones). It draws the most power, has the most transistors, and has a higher impact on user experience than the CPU. Maybe the key differentiator here is the GPU (and by extension, the DSPs). Here, NV has an undisputed lead, with OGL and silicon experience running back to SGI in the early nineties. Whereas Intel is just now reaching CPU parity in mobile, their GPU hardware and drivers are years behind.

            So it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out. I wish Intel would fab for NV. The TK1 and the TM1 would be unstoppable on a 22 or 14nm process.

          12. That’s not “changing the subject” that IS the subject:

            Whether various ARM shops can eek out enough CPU performance from stock ARM IP plus [insert tweak here] to maintain their revenue stream while Intel and its paid proxies eat their lunch.

            In Denver’s case they seem to have done pretty well, we await benchmarks and power.

            And BTW … Silvermont was never meant to “Crush” ARM … it was intended to halt ARMs advance into the mid-range which its done pretty well for the past year. Its caused at least 3 ARM server initiatives to fold.

          13. No offense, but that is *your* area of interest, certainly not the subject of this thread when I started it.

            In any event, thanks for the insight. This should be interesting in the next year or so.

          14. No, the subject of the thread when you started it was “Would you buy X or Y”.
            That’s a tactical dilemma that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

            My interest is strategic and yours is simply “can I demonstrate X beats Y if I make some assumptions” and I find it highly amusing that Nvidia chose the lowest clocked Bay Trail and crippled Haswell parts to “demonstrate X beats Y” in their powerpoint

            And on the subject of “interesting presentations made yesterday” … I give you this:

            https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/broadwell-is-coming-a-look-at-intels-low-power-core-m-and-its-14nm-process/

            It cost $40B that COULD have been spent tweaking the architecture while waiting for the Sheikh to build a new fab using oil money.

            Be careful where you invest your pension, won’t you ??

          15. Yes, my question was much more proletarian than what you are pursuing. But that does not make it invalid. I wasn’t seeking a detailed discussion about SoC strategies.

            My original question to the author sadly never got answered. I simply wanted to know if he felt the reviewed tablet is a better choice vs a TN7. I think he got scared off.

            I do appreciate all your insight and learned a lot here. But just grabbing a thread and declaring multiple times what the “subject” really “is” per your own preference – well that’s pretty manic behavior. If you want to discuss chip strategy, I’d be happy to do it in a different forum. That’s just not what I was looking for here.

            As for your inferences about oil money vs. monopoly money, I DO wish Intel would fab for AMD and NV, as I’m pretty certain they do they as well. My understanding is that Intel refuses to do so.

  5. Great review Brad as always, but one big questions remains with Android L right around the corner will these tablets ever receive the update? That is the big issue with many of these tablets vs say a nexus device…

    1. Doesn’t say much about Asus obviously, but Dell’s Venue 8 from last year did receive 4.3 pretty quickly; not sure about Kitkat.

    2. Of course noone can answer that question definitively but ASUS themselves, but concider this:

      The ASUS Padfone 2, originally released December 2012 with Android 4.0.4 is being supported up to this day. It’s currently on KitKat 4.4.2, and the latest official ASUS Firmware was released 2014/07/21.

      1. And the TF 101 never even got Jelly Bean, despite Asus specifically stating it would. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  6. Does this have USB OTG support? I had the MeMo Pad HD 7 from last year and switched to a Nexus 7 this year for the OTG.

    1. Yep — just tried a USB flash drive and a USB mouse and both worked just fine with a micro USB to full-sized USB adapter.

      1. That’s great. I almost wish I’d gotten this instead of the Nexus 7 2013 but then again guaranteed OS updates and 1080p were something I wanted over my old Memo Pad HD 7. I have noticed the Nexus has weaker headphone output and way more twitchy touchscreen swipe response vs the old MeMO Pad HD 7. It’s harder to set my brightness and volume with gesture swipes in media players.

        One thing that annoyed me to no end on the day HD 7 was that Settings would crash as whenever I tried to go into Sounds, forcing me to resort to third party apps. And since it never updated past Jelly Bean, I didn’t expect the bugfix to ever come.

        I certainly hope the new Bay Trail iterations fare better for long-term updates.

      2. How did the screen glass compare to the glass on a Nexus 7 FHD? I noticed the biggest physical difference coming from a 2013 MeMO Pad HD 7 to a N7 FHD was the slick oleophobic coating on the N7 FHD. The old MeMO Pad didn’t have any coating and was a HUGE smudge magnet. I’m sure the new MeMO Pad still cuts a few corners to meet its enticing low price point, like omitting the auto-screen brightness. But a non-smudge screen would mean a world of improvement.

  7. 1GB of RAM seems out of step with the otherwise strong specs.

    I can’t wait for console OS so that I can use my V8Pro as both a Windows and Android tablet. For about $150 that will be the best option for an 8″ tablet. But until Console OS is available, going Android is a better choice for most people. Although having Windows has its advantages too. But really, no reason to not have both once it is an option. BTW, Bluestacks is too slow for everyday dual OS use.

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