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
Battery Life
The MeMO Pad HD7 includes a 15Wh battery, a ~6% reduction compared to what was in the Nexus 7. The MT8125 SoC on the other hand is likely built on GF's 28nm process, potentially giving it a process advantage over NVIDIA's Tegra 3. There's much more to the platform power consumption story however. Differences in CPU architectures, efficiency of implementation and the surrounding non-CPU IP blocks all play a role in how efficient the MediaTek SoC is.
Normalizing for differences in battery capacity, the MeMO Pad HD7 lasts about 10% less on a single charge than the Nexus 7. Despite being on a lower power process, the MT8125 doesn't seem to be any more power efficient than NVIDIA's Tegra 3. I'm not sure how much of this is a Cortex A7 vs. Cortex A9 thing, and how much of it is the MT8125 just being optimized for cost and not power consumption.
The video playback results are also appreciably lower than the original Nexus 7. I couldn't find any documentation or indication of what video decode IP MediaTek used in the MT8125 but I did notice relatively high CPU utilization during video decode. In the same scenes where Tegra 3's Cortex A9s were running at low utilization/frequencies, I saw 20 - 50% and 1.2GHz on one of the MT8125's A7s.
MT8125
The one area where the MeMO Pad HD7 ends up more power efficient than the Tegra 3 based Nexus 7 is in our 3D battery life test. Both platforms run Egypt HD at similar performance levels (the T30L Nexus 7 is 15% faster on average), but the MT8125 based MeMO Pad HD7 lasts almost 40% longer. If you normalize for battery capacity, the advantage is even greater. GLB's 3D battery life test has the highest power draw of anything else we run, pointing to idle power optimizations as the biggest problem with the MT8125. What we're seeing here could also be a testament to Imagination Tech's power efficiency advantage over the Tegra 3 GPU.
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skeighter - Tuesday, August 20, 2013 - link
these are great little tablets. bought one for my wife. she was constantly playing with her phone to access facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. All on a tiny screen. Bought her a nice Lenovo 10" tablet, but she never used it. This is just the right size. Very fast, runs circles around both of my two year old dual core tablets. Liked it so much I bought another for myself.MarkWebb - Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - link
Just got one, very zippy (surprised), 3 issues: it downloaded, installed and rebooted with 4.2.2 but About still shows 4.2.1 and I tried checking for updates but it now says I am up to date even though About is not reporting it; it seems to occasionally register a single tap as a double; and Kindle dims the brightness! By about 20%. Got this for the micro SD slot.Asus Memo Pad HD7 - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
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mfox - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
I have only had it for a few days, and have not had much time to really run it through its paces yet, but I am most likely going to return it. The display, especially. in regard to video, does seem really good. I have not found the device to be generally laggy so far, although I haven't really used it with many apps, under significant "load." My real complaint is with what I saw in some other reviews and was concerned about, the build, fit and finish and overall quality. it does seem creaky, the screen does seem like it is made from plastic, and the one I got had a little glue in the seam between the screen and the rest of the body. That seem seems to be of uneven width around the device and most likely will get other gunk caught in it. I really haven't had a chance to see if it has problems or works well with various apps, but will probably return it. I have ordered, believe it or not, a Dell venue 7, which has 1gb more internal memory, a decent (from what I have read) processor, and an equivalent screen. It runs stock android and is right now at 4.2 (like the asus), rather than 4.3, I think. And it is at a similar price point.danbc - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
Indeed, the presence of SDHC slot is a good option.Even on Nexus 7, you can use a stick over otg cable, it's not the same thing, because, on his Asus tablet, and all devices with sd slot, with proper software, like directory bind, you can efectively extend your sotrage space on the SD card .
I have a question for the writter: what is the name of the cpu usage monitor you used?