ASUS MeMO Pad HD7 Review: $149 Nexus 7.1 Successor & Our First Look at MediaTek's MT8125
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 29, 2013 3:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Asus
- Mobile
- Android 4.2
- MeMO Pad
Final Words
We've already taken an early look at the new Nexus 7, also built by ASUS, and came away quite impressed. At $229 I don't think there's a better ultra portable tablet on the market today. With that established, how does the MeMO Pad HD7 hold up at $149? Pretty well I'd say.
The display is good given the price, as are the rest of the features. The MediaTek MT8125 SoC is a decent enough performer. Four Cortex A7s at 1.2GHz ends up being a good approximation of the four Cortex A9s in Tegra 3. The latter is quicker, but it's also more expensive.
The power consumption story is a different one. In light CPU or video playback workloads, the HD7 does worse than the original Nexus 7. You're still looking at around 8 hours on a single charge, but the higher end tablets are moving to 10 hours and beyond. It's unclear how much of this is software implementation vs. hardware, but by using the MT8125 you'd never guess it was a 28nm SoC with ARM's lowest power Cortex A7s inside. Obviously MediaTek's optimization target is cost, but power consumption is still important. I don't know that there's another alternative ASUS could've picked at this price point, so this is less a criticism of ASUS and more of MediaTek.
The MT8125's GPU performance is understandably not high-end, but it's still fast enough to play most modern Android games at high enough frame rates. The power efficiency story on the GPU side is much better as well. The HD7 easily outlasted the original Nexus 7 in our 3D battery life test.
The rest of the HD7's feature list is quite good. The 1280 x 800 IPS display is great for a value tablet, although it's obviously not going to be as good as what you get with the new Nexus 7. In terms of size, I personally prefer 8-inches if this is going to be my primary tablet. There's no denying the portability advantage of a 7-inch display though.
The addition of a microSD card slot will surely appeal to some customers. The integrated SK Hynix eNAND solution is an ok performer, but the HD7 will suffer the same fate as the old Nexus 7 over an extended period of usage until it gets Android 4.3.
The MeMO Pad HD7 is relatively quick, although no where near as fast as the new Nexus 7. UI animations are mostly smooth, but there are definite drops below 30 fps. The overall experience is similar to the original Nexus 7, just a tad slower.
Ultimately that's what ASUS has done with the HD7. It has given us a 1st gen Nexus 7 in almost every sense, with a $50 lower price tag. A pretty impressive accomplishment when you think about how big of a deal the Nexus 7 was when it arrived just over a year ago. Personally I'd rather have the new Nexus 7 at $229, but if you're on a very strict budget ASUS' MeMO Pad HD7 is a good option.
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rabidpeach - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
considering sdhx is mostly a microsoft invention, it might not be well supported in the android universeMonkeyPaw - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
The big issue now is that places will be clearing Nexus 7.1 stock out. I already see the 16GB listed for $170 (or less for refurbs). You can get a 32GB N7.1 for $199 at Microcenter.Death666Angel - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I guess people who want the Nexus experience will still get a Nexus, people who want mSD support, a rare facing camera and a lighter chassis will get the HD 7. And other markets are different as well, here in Germany, the N7 2012 is still at the normal prices: 199€ for the 16GB one over the Play Stor, 238€ for the 32GB one at a normal store with the Play Store being 249€. That makes the HD 7 a lot cheaper, white being 139€ and the rest being 149€, that's not much absolutely, but relatively quite the pay up to get an N7. :)nafhan - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
So... unless the MicroSD slot is really important, the best bet for bargain hunters may be to look for a deal on last year's N7. I've seen those hit this price point a few times (new).blanarahul - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
"Like most other quad-core implementations in Android, I rarely see the fourth core turn on. The first two are frequently active, with clock speeds usually up at 1.2GHz whenever you're doing anything (loading apps, scrolling, etc…). The third core usually plugs in to keep responsiveness up while doing anything more CPU intensive, but that fourth core is almost never plugged."I would like to ask. Under what conditions does the 4th core get plugged? How many cores ate used while playing games like Modern Combat 4?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I updated that paragraph a bit to be more specific to the MT8125/MeMO Pad HD7. MC4 tends to use 2 cores from what I've seen:http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7160/Screenshot_2...
peter23 - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
Maybe all cores might get used if you're streaming music, downloading a torrent and using the nav all at the same time. All cores could get used if you find a video that can only be decoded in software. I don't use Chrome but maybe each tab also uses a separate process like the desktop one. I sometimes open up multiple tabs right after each other and maybe each core will be used to process each tab. These are all guess because I only have a dual-core phone.agentsmithitaly - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I'm very happy to see only metric measures except screen diagonals, you guys really listen to your audience!Now what about an Allwinner soc review? Hard to get excited from a performance point of view, but it's amazing to see working 50 $ tablets
abrowne1993 - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
I feel like there is so much going on in that title.jjj - Monday, July 29, 2013 - link
You should try to find and test a product with Rockchip RK3188 , quad A9 on 28nm with just 25mm2 die size - very curious how it performs and at that size it got to be way cheap.