First look: Asus MeMO Pad 8

First look: Asus MeMO Pad 8

It is touted as the world's lightest 8-inch LTE tablet. It is priced at $499 and goes on sale on Oct 10.

Design

With its rounded corners, narrow bezel and a lightweight body, the MeMO Pad 8's design is practically identical to the previous iteration, but thinner.

It stacks up nicely against one of its biggest rivals, the Apple iPad Mini with Retina display. At 299g, the MeMO Pad is about 40g lighter than Apple's smallest slate.

The tablet's glossy back picks up fingerprints, but they are less obvious than you would expect. It comes in blue, pink (right) or white. Software

Asus' ZenUI interface runs on top of Google's Android 4.4 KitKat operating system. ZenUI looks clean and has extra features, ranging from reminders to a built-in chat app.

Battery life

Its 4,000mAh battery is said to last up to nine hours, though this will vary depending on how you use the tablet.

Screen

The MeMO Pad 8 has wide viewing angles because of its in-plane switching display. The 1,920 x 1,200-pixel screen resolution also ensures that text looks sharp. The screen is made from Corning Gorilla Glass 3, the latest version.

Processor

This is the first tablet to use Intel's new 64-bit Atom chip (Moorefield). Intel touts the usual battery life and performance gains on the Z3560 quad-core processor, but the most significant development is that it now comes with built-in LTE support. Four LTE bands, including the two (1,800 and 2,600) used by local telcos, are supported.

The tablet also supports the latest Wi-Fi 802.11ac standard, Near Field Communication and Bluetooth 4.0.

You can wirelessly stream content from the tablet to a compatible display using its Miracast feature.

Storage

Onboard storage is on the low side at 16GB. But, like most Android tablets, it has a microSD card slot that lets you increase the capacity by 64GB.


This article was first published on Oct 1, 2014.
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