Asus MeMO Pad 8 Preview – Nexus competitor of Nexus builder
Asus is a successful tablet manufacturer and millions of tablets from the company have already been sold. However, a large part of it is not known as an Asus tablet, but as a Google product. We are of course talking about the two Nexus 7 models that Asus launched with Google in 2012 and 2013 respectively. On the one hand, that is good for Asus, but we can imagine that the company also wants to achieve similar successes with tablets that it sells under its own brand name.
At its press conference for the opening of the Computex trade show in Taiwan, Asus showed a new small tablet that could do just that: the MeMO Pad 8, an 8″ Android tablet with a beautiful screen, powerful hardware and a suggested retail price of $ 199 That suggests that it would cost 199 euros with a European release.
Asus previously released a tablet under the same name, but the two tablets differ considerably in terms of hardware. Where the old MeMO Pad 8 had a not-so-fast quad-core Rockchip SoC with Cortex A9 cores and a relatively old GPU, the new MeMO Pad 8 is powered by Intel’s brand new Atom Z3580, a Moorefield generation chip with four Silvermont cores clocked up to 2.3GHz and a 6-series PowerVR GPU. Apple uses the same kind of GPU in its A7 soc.
Fast and smooth
After the press conference we were able to get started with the MeMO Pad 8 and the new Moorefield chip certainly seems to hold its own. The tablet feels fast and smooth, especially when compared to Acer ‘s Iconia Tab 8 , which we were also able to put through its paces recently. According to Intel, the Moorefield chips were developed specifically for Android, while the Bay Trail chip, which is in Acer’s tablet, is also used for various Windows devices. We don’t know exactly what Intel means by this, but we can well imagine that on the software side, there will be more focus on optimizations in the Android kernel and drivers.
We would have liked to run some benchmarks to make a good comparison with the Atom Z3745 from the Iconia Tab 8, but this was not possible due to all the hustle and bustle surrounding the demo devices and the attentive Asus employees. We hope to be able to do that later this week during the fair and at the same time collect some more information about the Atom Z3850.
The screen has also been upgraded compared to the first MeMO Pad. The screen in the latest version again has a diagonal of 8″, but this time with a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels, which makes everything look very sharp. As with almost all tablets these days, it is an IPS screen, which makes the image look at slanted angles looks almost the same as from the front.The color reproduction, brightness and contrast of the screen were good to the eye and the screen didn’t seem to be inferior to that of, for example, the Nexus 7. How the screens really relate to each other , however, we can only say once we have the MeMO Pad 8 in stock.
The edges around the screen are not too large and because the back has a small curve towards the edges, it fits nicely in the hand. For an 8″ tablet, the new MeMO Pad is also very compact and light; it weighs only 299 grams and is 7.45 mm thick. Within that compact housing, Asus has put a 15.2 Wh battery, which should be good for a battery life of 9. Since the Atom Z3580 is made on a relatively economical 22nm process, that is quite possible.
On the right side are the familiar power and volume buttons and on the left is a small opening for a micro SD card. Strangely enough, Asus does not mention a micro-sd slot in the spec sheets itself, while it did when the tablet was first shown in Japan a few weeks ago.
Our main point of criticism concerns the material of which the back is made, glossy plastic that quickly shows fingerprints. With a matte plastic back, the MeMO Pad 8 would have looked a lot fancier; now it looks and feels a bit cheap. Fortunately, the build quality seems to be good; we couldn’t detect any crazy seams or cracks and the back doesn’t bounce when you push it.
A new Nexus?
Rumors have been circulating for several months that Google will not release a Nexus 7 this year, but a Nexus 8, again from Asus. There are also stories that the Nexus 8 will use Intel’s Moorefield Atom. Google would like to make the next version of Android 64-bit compatible and Intel is the only chip manufacturer that currently has a 64-bit processor for mobile phones and tablets on the shelf. If those rumors turn out to be true, it could very well be that the MeMO Pad 8 will form the basis for the Nexus 8.
We wouldn’t mind at all; with a nicer back and fast updates via Google, the MeMO Pad 8 would be a great successor to the Nexus 7 in our opinion. However, this is still largely speculation and wishful thinking . Other rumors speak of a Nexus 8 made by HTC and using a Tegra chip from Nvidia. We will have to wait at least until the end of June for an answer, then Google’s I / O conference will take place, at which a next Nexus tablet may be announced.