Netbooknews The lucky folks at Netbooknews have gotten their hands on the long-awaited Asus Eee Pad MeMo tablet. Well, not THE MeMo 370T that’s supposed to come out with Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and the too-good-to-be-true $250 price, but it’s the Asia-bound version of MeMo 171 that sports a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor and a belt tightening price of $585 – or the equivalent of it. Yikes!
They have posted an unboxing and walkthrough video of the Asus MeMo 171, all 22 minutes of it. Here’s what we can tell you about their initial impression of the tablet.
The Asus Eee Pad MeMo 171, with its 199 x 117 x 12 mm dimensions and 385 grams weight certainly isn’t aiming to be the lightest, thinnest or cheapest tablet around, what with a size that the ancient Samsung Galaxy Tab. If there’s any consolation to be found in the size department, it’s that the MeMo 171 is still smaller than Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet.
Sporting a beautiful 7-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 800, it comes with a bunch of preloaded apps to make good use of the stylus, which you can slide easily inside. It also has a dedicated menu button on the bottom that allows you take screenshot and doodle on the screen ala the HTC Flyer/Galaxy Note. Oh stylii, you are trying so hard to make a comeback.
Netbooknews
Netbooknews
Performance-wise, the Asus Eee Pad MeMo 171 fails to make a good impression. As you can see on the video, the tablet lags when switching between landscape and horizontal mode; and when moving from one home screen to another. This could be due to the fact that it’s still touting Android 3.2.1 Honeycomb. According to the walkthrough, the tablet scores 34.5 fps on Nenamark 1, 24fps on Nenamark 2, and a Quadrant score in the 1,800 range.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Asus Eee Pad MeMo 171 is the Bluetooth media remote thingabox named as the MeMic. What’s so cool about it? For one, it comes with a transparent OLED display. Unfortunately, it seems they got a lemon version of the MeMic since it failed to work. Thus, we can’t see the magic box in action.
Netbooknews
Overall, we echo the disappointment that the reviewer feels about the Asus Eee Pad MeMo 171 and how it seems it isn’t up to par with the company’s other great tablets. What improvement will the Asus Eee Pad MeMo 370T or the supposed Google Nexus tablet bring? We just have to wait and see.
