Is the ASUS MeMO Pad a Tablet that's Worthy of being a Travel Partner?

I bet you might not have gotten the chance to have heard of the brand called MeMO PAD. Asus is the builder of this new tablet and with the Google Nexus Tablet under Asus' belt, there are many expectation with regards to this new release. Let's go over some of the things that I feel would be most important for your decision.

Design

The overall look and feel of the MeMo Pad seems to have gotten its roots from its Asus Google Nexus 7 counterpart, especially with how the textured back was designed. The main difference that one would notice though is that with the Nexus 7, you'll get a soft touch material coating as compared to the hard plastic feel of the MeMO Pad. The MeMO Pad also comes in multiple colors which include black, white, gray, and cherry pink. 

The ASUS MeMO Pad measures 7.7 x 4.6 x 0.4 inches and weighs 12.5 ounces. This makes the MeMO Pad tablet slightly larger and heavier than its Google Nexus 7 counterpart. 

The MeMo Pad's power button and volume controls are located on the top left edge of the device, with a headphone jack at the top and a microUSB and microSD slot on the bottom. The ASUS MeMO PAD tablet has an expandable memory. The speaker is located on the back, an inch-wide grille on the bottom left.

Display

The screen resolution on the MeMO Pad, 1024 x 600. This falls short compared to the competition. The Google Nexus 7 has a 1280 x 800 pixel displays, providing crisp and clear text and images. 

The screen limitations were especially apparent when we were browsing several different websites. Smaller text was harder to read than on the Google Nexus 7. Viewing angles tend to be a bit limited, making it difficult to see content clearly.

Audio

You would be happy to hear that we were pleasantly surprised by the audio quality of the ASUS MeMO Pad. It played loud and clear music during playback and it makes it quite a good alternative to bringing portable speakers when traveling. 

The MeMO Pad's speaker is enhanced by SonicMaster Audio Technology and the Audio Wizard app, which includes preset audio levels for different categories of media. 

Keyboard and Interface

The main advantage of the ASUS MeMO Pad is that it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which includes features such an enhanced notification drawer and a series of performance enhancements dubbed "Project Butter" which allows for an extremely smooth user experience. 

The ASUS MeMO Pad includes has two keyboards to choose from. These are the Android keyboard and the ASUS keyboard, although additional keyboards can be installed through Google Play. The ASUS keyboard, which has light gray keys against a darker gray background, features a full number row along the top, and has slightly more space between each key than its Android counterpart. 

Both keyboards support voice typing, but the ASUS keyboard requires Internet connectivity, whereas the Android keyboard works offline. Users can also input text using Google voice typing, which also works without an Internet connection. Though in a general sense this feature would most likely be left unnoticed by the general user. 

Apps

ASUS MeMO Pad tablet has a been nice enough to only put in features that can be considered as useful and not flood the unit with too much bloatware.  There is SuperNote, which a scribbling and note-taking app, the MyPainter drawing app, ASUS Studio for managing and editing photos, Zinio and MyBitCast for syncing notes with your ASUS WebStorage account. ASUS also includes App Backup, App Locker, ASUS Story and Studio and the BuddyBuzz chat client.

Another great thing to take note of about the ASUS MeMO Pad is that it also has access to the Google Play store, which currently contains a countless number of applications that one can download and use. The MeMO Pad also includes Floating App, which allows certain applications, such as the browser, video, a stopwatch and certain settings, to be displayed as a floating window on top of the currently running application. This feature I find quite neat and have found it quite useful when multitasking is needed.  

Performance

Here is where things get a little tricky for the ASUS MeMO Pad. One thing that you have to keep in mind is that the ASUS MeMO Pad is built for Media Consumption and not for games that contain heavy graphics. The reason for this is that the ASUS MeMO Pad only uses a single core 1-GHz VIA WM8950 processor with 1GB of RAM. I personally would have wanted double the core at least or double the RAM. It is here that you'll get to notice a slight lag in terms of transition effects such as going from portrait to landscape mode. 

The MeMO Pad has three power settings, Performance, Balanced and Power Saving. If you wish to have your applications to load faster, such as a game like Angry Birds, you'd have to keep it at Performance. Placing it at Power Saving could have you on wait time for much longer than you would want to. 

One thing that surprised me if anything was that the graphics looked great and played flawlessly with "Riptide GP." But, there was a delay between tilts and the in-game steering, which made the vehicle quite a challenge to handle. Games like Angry Bird and Fruit Ninja all played quite smoothly. 

Webcam

The ASUS MeMO Pad is equipped with a VGA Front Facing Camera (.3MP). This is pretty ok for webcam applications like skype. Just bear with the slight yellow hue and some rather apparent resolution issues. 

Battery Life and Wi-Fi

With continuous use the ASUS MeMO Pad has the capacity to last a little over 6 hours to 7 hours, much less though if you are watching movies and playing somewhat high graphic games (at least those that can run on the provided specifications). 

Verdict

The ASUS MeMO Pad Tablet is an OK tablet as a travel companion for three simple reasons:

1. Its cheap and easy to pack

2. It can be an awesome Multimedia Companion - from eBooks to Sound Blasting your boredom away.

3. Its on Jelly Bean giving you a somewhat buttery smooth performance. 

Right now the ASUS MeMO PAD is selling at less than Php 6,000. Though do check out other retail outlets such as those in Greenhills in San Juan, Philippines and St. Francis Square beside Megamall. 

If you ask me personally though, I would check out the Cherry Mobile Tablets first prior to making a choice on this one. You might have to decide on what you can afford versus specs.

Till Next Time...

-Metz