We knew ASUS will have a number of different products at display in Barcelona and thought we should give them a spin, as well. As you would imagine, ASUS saved the best for its Transformer series and with the MemoPad 7 and MemoPad 10, they’re going for the tablet buyers on the budget. Still, both devices offer pretty solid bang for the buck and we can’t but recommend them if they fit in your budget requirements.
However, the smaller of the two tablets, MemoPad 7, is a tough sell. And you know why – because there’s Nexus 7, which may have its downsides (like a lack of a microSD card slot and HDMI port), but it will always run the latest version of Android. Then again, I don’t want to say that the MemoPad 7 is a bad product – cause it’s not; it’s just that it will always be compared to Nexus 7 (which also happen to be made by ASUS). The MemoPad is a solidly-built tablet and despite the fact that it lacks metallic parts, it feels nice in hand. All of the usual ports are there, and so is the microSD expansion slot for those moment when you need extra storage. Unfortunately though, it wasn’t on display in Barcelona.
As for the MemoPad 10, it’s cheaper than the Nexus 10 and some other tablets (mostly made by Samsung). Although it too feels solid in hand and comes with decent specs, we can’t but conclude that it’s not as “premium” as some ASUS Transformer devices, namely the Transformer Infinity. On the other hand, if we had to compare it with Transformer Series 300, we would have hard time finding enough differences worth talking about. Sure enough, it lacks a keyboard dock, but other than that, the two come with pretty much the same specs.
Here’s the MemoPad 10 in all its glory. As I said – the MemoPad 7 was not on display at ASUS’ booth.
