Gadgetory

hi I'm Scott Stein senior editor at cnet and this is the Asus memo pad smart ten kind of a mouthful for what is really kind of a 10 inch version of the nexus 7 asus has got chops in the tablet game in android you know they make the transformer pads they make the nexus 7 what this is is kind of a little in between in the sense that it's a budget tablet that's three hundred dollars that really has the same guts as a nexus 7 you're talking about a 1.2 gigahertz Tegra 3 processor 1 gig of ram and a 1280 x 800 screen now that resolution matches what you get in the 7-inch Nexus 7 and you're paying one hundred dollars more here it seems kind of like not that great a deal you do get more battery life here because it's a larger tablet but you're not getting that much new under the hood it runs Android 4.1 point2 but can't be upgraded up to 4.2 and in addition it does have a couple of nice little bells and whistles if you like hdmi if you like micro SD card slots those are both included here and those can be quite useful and those are probably the reasons why you'd like this most that and the idea that is a front and rear facing camera 5 megapixel here one point 2 megapixel in the front but it doesn't really feel next-gen and doesn't even really feel cutting-edge current-gen I consider the fact that the nexus 7 came out last summer and that was a 199 tablet so you're dealing here with something that comes out in March 2013 it's bigger and it is more expensive you've got stuff out there like the Nexus 10 which is a super high resolution screen you've got iPads which have retina displays I know that's not something that Android users always like to hear but there are other better options in the Android landscape too and this very plastic design here is really not going to make you fall in love with the form it kind of feels like last year's tablet in this year's mode and the savings are not as great as you'd hope but then again it doesn't really do anything that terribly it's just probably not going to be ready to go on board with where androids going next and considering that we still a lot of 2013 left to go you might want to get something that's a little more future proof I'm Scott Stein and that's a look at the Asus memo pad smart 10