Cheap and Cheerful: The ASUS MeMo Pad Comes to Malaysia with a RM499 Pricetag

If you’re looking for a really cheap 7-inch tablet to occasionally tote around, the ASUS MeMo Pad is worth a look.

At RM499 — RM500 cheaper than the iPad mini and Nexus 7 — the MeMo Pad is specced to a budget with a 1024×600 (versus 1280×800 on the Nexus 7 and 1024×768 on the iPad mini) display producing 350-nit of brightness and a pixel density of just 170ppi, well below the industry average though viewing angle is good at a claimed 140 degrees.

A 1GHz single core processor and 1GB of RAM keeps performance decent on the Android 4.1 tablet while a 4,270mAh battery offers a claimed 7 hours of running time. There’s 8GB of onboard storage plus 5GB of free cloud storage thanks to ASUS WebStorage and a microSD card slot too. Like the Nexus 7, the MeMo Pad only has a 1MP f/2.0 front-facing camera with 720p video capability. Adding cheerful to the mix, ASUS offers the tablet in three colours — Sugar White, Titanium Gray, and Cherry Pink.

While we don’t doubt that ASUS can capably build a quality tablet on a budget, the MeMo Pad does make a few sacrifices in the name of affordability. If cheap is your thing, then this is worth a look. At that price the MeMo Pad would make a good mini entertainment computer for your car but if you can, saving up for the the quad-core Tegra 3 Nexus 7 or even iPad mini is probably a better idea.

Details on the availability of the MeMo Pad here.