Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 Apps and Performance
We’ve already mentioned that Asus has crammed a few extra apps into the MeMO Pad Smart 10 by default, but what do you get out of this?
They’re mostly sensible additions that fill in the gaps left by Google’s own list of apps. Asus Studio is a simple yet comprehensive photo editing app that lets you change things like color saturation and brightness, apply a plethora of filters, add speech bubbles, and paint over your images.
BuddyBuzz is a chat aggregator that lets you connect to Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk in a single app. MyLibrary Lite, on the other hand, is an e-book reader.
The other preinstalled apps, which you won’t get anywhere else, are more security-based. Parental Lock and App Locker let you apply passwords to your apps and content, and App Backup lets you save an image of apps and their data to an SD card.
None of these apps have the swagger or flashy gimmicks you might find in a top-end Samsung tablet, but like so many areas of the Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10, they’re relentlessly practical. The tablet also comes with Asus Webstorage, which gives you access to your 5GB of free cloud storage. You can set the tablet to automatically transfer things like photos to the cloud to limit the time you have to spend transferring the files manually.
In addition to these extras, the Asus MeMO Pad Smart comes with the full list of Google apps, from Mail to Maps and Navigation, as well as access to the Play Store app market. The main Google app to highlight is Navigation – which lies here because the MeMO Pad Smart offers GPS functionality, unlike some cheaper tablets. However, in order to use the tablet as a GPS in the car, you will need to invest in an app that offers offline maps as there is no 3G option here.
Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 cameras
Another feature the Asus offers that other affordable tablets lack is dual cameras on the front and back of the tablet. There’s a 4MP sensor on the back (but no LED flash) as well as a 1.3MP user-facing sensor for video chats.
We like that the MeMO Pad’s camera offers a lot of fun digital filter effects. In addition to standard vintage, sepia and negative filters, there is a lomo mode and a great color pop mode. This makes images black and white apart from one color – perfect for an artistic appearance.
What we don’t like about the Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10’s camera is the image quality. Images in anything but perfect light are grainy and noisy, and a 4-megapixel sensor isn’t enough to create highly detailed images. The lack of a flash further reduces the camera’s usefulness in low light. We would have preferred to see Asus lower the price and ditch the rear camera.
Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 battery life
Battery life is another area that comes with fairly unremarkable performance. The Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 has a 19 Wh Li-Ion battery, which Asus claims has 8.5 operating hours.
For less demanding tasks, that’s a number we can believe. However, if you play a looping video at 50 percent brightness and Wi-Fi off, it takes seven hours. That’s enough for a long flight, but falls short of the 8+ hours of some 10-inch competitors like the Sony Xperia Tablet S. The battery also drains fairly quickly on standby – leave it unused for a week and you can expect it to be flat.
Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 value
Comparing the features to the pounds spent, the Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 sounds like value for money. Expandable storage, a 10-inch screen, a decent processor and dual cameras for under £300 seems like a winning combination at first glance. However, the MeMO Pad’s screen is disappointing, both in terms of resolution and picture quality, and you get more features in the Google Nexus 10. At £50 more, this tablet seems an undeniably superior offer.
verdict
Like so many Asus Android tablets, the Asus MeMO Pad Smart 10 excels at being practical. On the plus side, it’s fairly cheap and comes with expandable storage and a decent processor. On the other hand, the screen isn’t that great and the cameras are disappointing too. Its biggest gripe, however, is the Google Nexus 10, which offers a lot more tablet bang for the buck for just £50 more.
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We thoroughly test every tablet we test. We use industry standard tests to properly compare features and we use the tablet as our primary device during the review period. We will always tell you what we find and we never accept money to rate a product.
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Used as our main tablet during the period
Verified against recognized industry benchmarks
Ongoing real tests
Tested with various games, apps and services
points in detail
performance 7
value 8
draft 6
screen quality 5
functions 7
battery life 7