Skip to main content

Asus skips CES, announces $150 MeMo Pad tablet

Check out our review of the Asus MemoPad HD7 tablet.

CES may be done, but Asus isn’t. Two days after the annual trade show ended, it has announced the MeMo Pad, an Android tablet that will cost a mere $150.

The MeMo Pad, as stated in a Asus press release, has been released as an answer to “Changing market conditions”, which we think is a code word for lower prices. So far, several low-cost tablets are entering or already on the market in 2013, such as Acer’s own Iconia tablet.

At a modest $150, you could probably guess this tablet is not coming to a store near you with the latest and greatest hardware. Despite this, Asus has worked hard to cram a ton of features and fairly decent hardware into this device. With a 1GHz processor, the CPU of the MeMo Pad is certainly not turning heads, but Asus is throwing in a standard 7-inch display, 1GB of RAM, and your choice of 8 or 16 GB of internal storage, plus a microSD card to maximize your investment. The real treat is that this tablet will come with Android Jelly Bean, rather than the now-dated taste of Ice Cream Sandwich, not to mention three different casing colors for your own personal flair. With an advertised 7-hour battery life, Asus isn’t going overboard in the battery department, but still giving decent performance. This tablet may not catch glances anywhere beyond its price and color options, but certainly no complaints either.

Compared to other tablets on the market, the MeMo Pad certainly isn’t the cheapest you can get, but it certainly is (along with Acer and a few others) one of the cheapest tablets you can get with a real brand name. The MeMo Pad is probably a good choice against Acer’s Iconia or any other brand-name 150 dollar tablet – not that there are many others out there to begin with. You certainly can’t do much better with a price like that. Asus has plans to launch it sometime in January to emerging markets, but you can grab in America some time in April – even if it will be grossly outdated by then.

Image used with permission by copyright holder
Joshua Sherman
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Joshua Sherman is a contributor for Digital Trends who writes about all things mobile from Apple to Zynga. Josh pulls his…
Does a job listing mean Apple TV is getting an Android phone app?
The Apple TV app listing in Google Play.

There already is an Android app for Apple TV. More than one, actually. Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends

Let's read way too much into a job listing from Apple. Spurred by a (paywalled) piece from Bloomberg under the headline "Apple Signals That It’s Working on TV+ App for Android Phones," the reblogging industry is all atwitter over the idea that an Apple TV app may be coming to Android phones and tablets. And it might!

Read more
What Apple isn’t telling you about the new iPad Pro’s OLED display
Watching video on M4 iPad Pro.

Tandem OLED! Awesome, right? Wait … hold the phone. Tandem OLED? What in the what?

Did Apple geniuses just smash together two OLED panels and, et voilà, a brand new, unprecedentedly awesome display is born, exclusive to the new iPad Pro? Well, not exactly. There’s more to it than that, and in the end, it’s great news for all of us.
Digging into the world of Tandem OLED

Read more
The Google Pixel 8 is about to get a long-awaited update
A person holding the Google Pixel 8 showing the screen.

If you own a Google Pixel 8 or the recently released Google Pixel 8a, we have some good news for you. A Google Pixel 8 Pro feature is finally coming to your phone.

According to an APK teardown of Google's AICore app by Android Authority, a new toggle for activating Gemini Nano on the two smartphones is present. Google also mentioned that Nano would be available on these phones through Developer Options, indicating a launch is coming sooner rather than later. This means users will likely need to activate it manually when Gemini Nano finally launches on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8a.

Read more