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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
Qwertilot - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
A bit scary really this. Judged objectively, this thing is a big percentage - 80? - per cent of an ideal small tablet and the new Nexus 7 is a bigger one. Huge improvements would need battery breakthroughs. Yet they're both down at very low prices.Budget PCs really do seem to have an awful lot further to come.
HighTech4US - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Anand why on the "ASUS 7-inch Tablet Specification Comparison" chart (or anywhere in the review) are the different sensors each tablet has (or doesn't have) not mentioned?Because of the lack of complete specifications I have to dig deeper on other sites to get a complete picture of what each Tablet offers. That really shouldn't happen.
-----
Again a lack of sensors, especially GPS really make these lower cost tablets not very useful.
No GPS means NO Google Maps.
Arbie - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
It's great that this Asus tablet has micro-SD. I won't even consider a tablet that doesn't. It is hugely quicker to swap media sets in and out using SD than any other way. For my uses, the size of internal memory is much less important.Regarding SD formatting, here's a utility that let me put a 64GB card in an circa 2009 media player. Get it at: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32fo...
Arbie - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Also, Anand, the presence or lack of micro-SD should appear in the "Basic Tablet Specification Comparison" table. This is really important to people, even if Google and Amazon downplay it for their own marketing reasons. Just look at the number of comments on this topic.Wwhat - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
I don't think the absence of SD-card slots on google's devices has anything to do with cost whatsoever, SD-card slots are easy and cheap and available on the lowest of budget devices,It's more an attempt to force people to do everything through (google-)cloud storage I think, as the article states
And yes it's stupid and I'd even say nasty since it would cost them next to nothing to add it.
'don't be evil'? I think there is a reason they abandoned that mantra.
The question now is: What can we the consumers do about it? Are there attachment you can connect to the nexus to add a SD slot without the thing getting too ridiculously messy? Anybody know?
user777 - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
I have Nexus 7 2012 and there is no problem to use USB OTG cable + USB stick (or Transcend USB stick with microSD+SD card slot). I use Total Commander+USB Stick plugin (free). It is possible to open any doc/pdf/jpeg/avi/mp4 file.It is possible to share any folder or external HDD at your laptop and to use like WiFi Network LAN storage using ES File Explorer. It is possible to play any movie using streaming (without downloading) from the Network LAN storage (MX Player or BS Player). It is even possible playing movie from WiFi FTP server.
n13L5 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Quoting the Article: "Google was pretty adamant against including a microSD slot in the original Nexus 7 (preferring a combination of internal and cloud storage), but ASUS put one back in the design of the MeMO Pad HD7."Good Asus, bad Google, stop being evil, k? Stupid cloud not always accessible.
evolucion8 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Hi, I have a question, which CPU monitoring software did you use to monitor the CPU usage during videoplayback? Looks sleek and lean!user777 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Smal mistake at the ASUS 7-inch Tablet Specification Comparison:ASUS Nexus 7 (2012) has 1.2MP front-facing camera
user777 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Just got the official Android 4.3 upgrade on my Nexus 7 2012.Would be glad to see the performance of the new Android version 4.3 at the storage random write tests for the old Nexus 7 and new Memo Pad HD 7.