ASUS has been making affordable, quality Android tablets ever since the Nexus 7, but in the last couple of years they’re really upped their game when it comes to 7 and 8-inch tablets. The PC manufacturer now offers a fairly comprehensive range of smaller Android tablets that offer great bang for your buck and now, they’re revamping them. With new FonePads comes new MEMO Pads as well, in both 7 and 8-inch variants. The 8-inch variant however, is perhaps the tablet most are going to be excited about. It’s not a massive leap forward by any means compared to other tablets, like the Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4, but we’re willing to bet it’s one of the best value tablets available when it hits shelves later this year.
The 8-inch display in the new MEMO Pad 8 is a 1920 x 1200 IPS panel and beneath it is a new quad-core 64-bit Intel Atom Z3580 CPU clocked at 2.3 Ghz with 2GB of RAM. There’s an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 1.2-megapixel camera included, too. It’s just 7.45mm thick and is running Android 4.4.2 with some light adjustments from ASUS. This guy also supports 4G LTE, 3G and 802.11ac WiFi, making this a great tablet to get online and at just 299g ASUS is calling it the world’s lightest 4G tablet. Still, the device manages to squeeze in a battery that should last 9-hours of continuous use, which isn’t too bad.
The new MEMO Pad 8 (with a model number of ME581CL) is to come in white, pink, black and blue colors and will be available in Q3 of this year. While there’s no word on pricing just yet, we doubt that this latest MEMO Pad is to be expensive, especially if previous releases from ASUS are anything to go by. With a quad-core Intel CPU that (on paper) matches up pretty well against the latest Snapdragon 801 and even 805, it looks like Intel might finally be working their up the mobile ladder.