With the MWC action a little underwhelming at the moment, Asus is all over the news due to the Padfone Infinity and Fonepad unveilings. But even if hybrids and weird phone/tab combos are not your thing, the Taiwanese have you covered by expanding the availability of the recently released MeMo Pad tablets.
Both the 7-inch ME172V (aka MeMo Pad 7) and 10-inch ME301T (or MeMo Pad Smart 10) are due out in the UK by mid-April, with the bigger model set to go on sale as soon as March 7. Currys, PC World, Tesco and Amazon are the British retailers you can pre-order the big guy on and recommended retail price is a predictable £249 ($378, including VAT).
Predictable, but also affordable, given that’s a full 70 pounds less than Nexus 10’s price. Granted, you can’t really put the two tabs in the same league hardware-wise, but for someone concerned more about finances and less about speed it sounds just right.
The MeMo Pad 7 is going to be even more accessible to the masses, starting at £129, or $195. Unfortunately, that’s probably not going to be enough to drive people away from Google’s Nexus 7, also available for £129.
In a nutshell, the 10-inch MeMo Pad is a rebranded, barely tweaked version of last year’s Transformer TF300 sans the optional docking station. You get Android 4.1, a 1,280 x 800 pix res panel, a quad-core Tegra 3 CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 5 MP/1.2 MP dual cameras, 16 GB of internal storage and microSD support.
Meanwhile, the 7-incher looks a lot like the Nexus 7 on the outside, but on the inside comes with a 1 GHz VIA WM8950 chip. The screen is also poorer, at just 1,024 x 600 pix res, not to mention the MeMo Pad 7 will soon get left behind software-wise.
All things considered, is anyone interested in the MeMo Pads? Why? Why not?
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