Gadgetory

by now we should know a soos from their google fight tablets the Nexus 7 both versions which were both great offerings however a soos doesn't stray away from creating tablets for the more budget-minded and this is a great example age Josh magar from Android thority what's going on everybody and this is the asus memo pad HD 7 as a 7-inch tablet by a soos you can expect the memo pad to take a few cues from its Google 5 brethren this is mostly true but not for the latest version of the Nexus 7 however this tablet can be best described as the fully plastic slightly hefty a version of the original set Nexus 7 from 2012 right down to the button layout and the speaker grille found on the lower back plastic is the name of the game here and while I wouldn't call it a poor build you will pretty much get what you pay for at the front you get the 7 inch screen with a respectable bezel around it it isn't as thin as we'd like but it is manageable front facing camera is centered up top with the Asus logo centered on the bottom around the sides you see how this tablet is pretty thick and is like 2 whole parts glued together the button layout is on the right while the micro SD card slot lies just opposite of it I did find the button somewhat odd because they lie at an angle on the back and thus feel a little bit weird to press anyway USB and headphone ports are up top around the back we have the rear facing camera in the hand of this budget tablet toes the line of comfort by being almost larger than a 1 hand grip usually would allow it is actually well balanced it isn't light or heavy by any means and while the plastic might allude to how cheap the memo pad actually is it does feel decent in the hand as it lacks a slippery touch ultimately you do get what you pay for with the memo pad but what you do get doesn't feel too bad the HD in the name of this memo pad means that it is packing a display capable of 1280 by 800 resolution and 216 PPI while quite a few tablets out there sport less resolution there are plenty of others out there capable of more so the memo pad pretty squarely sits in the middle as an IPS display it gets nice and bright and colors get an appreciable amount of vibrancy viewing angles are actually pretty good all around as well while the pixel density might seem a little low it doesn't make as much of a difference when the screen is some distance away from your face luckily when brought in somewhat closer the pixelation is kept to a pretty nice minimum while the build in the screen actually turned out pretty decent performance is usually where the budget tablet starts to show its cards Billiton is a mediatek mt6752 graphics are handled by the power S VR SGX 544 MP 1 ooh that's a mouthful for a cheap tablet you shouldn't be expecting the cutting edge in performance and this is basically the case scores an NT to keep things fairly low and in practice I did run into pretty common instances of stuttering even in the general UI games can get hindered quite a bit as well as the stutter can just get worse and impede your ability to play well multitasking isn't helped by the one gigabyte of RAM doing too much makes the stutter even worse for simple tasks the aptly named memo pad could do a decent job but anything more than that and you'll probably end up seeing it struggle the biggest story in the hardware department is pretty obviously the inclusion of a micro SD card slot while cloud computing is something Google tries to push in its Nexus devices I couldn't help but feel just a twinge of jealousy at the expandable memory that the memo pad can boast aside from that however you get the standard package here Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4.0 GPS but no NFC it's about as bare-bones as you can get so it makes some sense that Asus would put in at least a micro SD card slot to sweeten the pot as much as it could now battery life on the memo pad is another example of how this tablet hits the middle ground with a 38 90 milli amp power units it isn't a very high capacity but it did get the tablet to handle my looping video test for almost seven hours power saving certainly helps in this regard as a soos added in its own power saver to help you the most longevity ultimately it will pretty much survive a day's work perhaps just barely though depending on how heavily you use it and you're probably going to find yourself relying on that power saver we never really get all that excited about cameras on tablets there are rarely ever any flash diodes and that usually tells us a thing or two right off the bat about their quality at five megapixels the memo pads camera isn't really anything to get too excited about the app has a good amount of filters and scene modes on top of the panorama and HDR picture quality like pretty much any tablet in any range is good for pictures in a pinch colors are a little muted and lacks some vibrancy while the sharpness leaves a little to be desired especially in shots with some depth ultimately this is what we should expect from a tablet especially a cheaper one such as this now a soos didn't spare any expense in the software department adding in a myriad of its own tweaks and extras the Android 4.1.2 version of a Seuss's own UI comes with a lot of them aside from the power saver already mentioned built-in apps include a movie studio for editing recorded video and even a couple Asus branded creative apps like artists for drawing and studio for gallery editing the most glaring changes are in the general UI like the power widget in the notification drop-down that gives access to some of the most used settings in a rather garish purple color hold the home button down and you'll get an arch of shortcuts that are customizable and finally an extra button on the left of the soft keys gives you access to small overlay apps that stay on top of anything you're already doing you get a lot of tools but I can't help but think that the sheer number of additions just further bogs down a tablet that is already struggling to perform well and finally as I've mentioned often already in this review the Asus memo pad HD 7 comes in at $150 a pretty great price for at least a decent tablet and so there you have it that's exactly what this tablet is decent no real advancements involved and while on the outside it's pretty simple Asus certainly did all they could to enhance the user experience but might have done more to just slow it down than anything at an extra $80 you can get them much better performing and overall much better put together current Nexus 7 at the sacrifice of expandable memory and if all you need is an entry-level experience then perhaps the memo pad can give you what you need but putting down that extra money for the nexus7 could mean a tablet that will be able to keep up with the growing demands of Android users something the memo pad just might not be able to boast even just a year from now more importantly you have to weigh the options of saving money or quite simply having a much better experience and time elsewhere as always thank you very much for watching and if you liked the video make sure you drop us a like down below don't forget to subscribe to the Android Authority channel because we have a lot of great content available already and in store for you and once you're done with all of that make sure you head over to Android authority comm because we are your source for all things Android