Software, Bombardment Life

Several generations ago, Asus loaded their tablets with near-stock Android, which was pleasant to use only lacking somewhat on the feature side, mostly because the tablet iteration of Android wasn't particularly mature. Fast forward to 2014 and the era of the MeMO Pad vii, and it's a completely different story.

The Pad 7 is loaded with Android iv.4.2 out of the box, complete with a new custom Asus pare that'southward used across their range of products. While every standard application has been skinned, such as the Contacts, Calendar and Gallery apps, Asus hasn't significantly expanded on the characteristic sets. The general style used across the operating system looks good, although I accept to wonder why they didn't save some coin on development and just stick with stock Android.

The homescreen arrangement is a standard 6x6 thing with a few custom Asus widgets, and the lockscreen has a few changeable awarding shortcuts plus Asus' What'southward Next functionality. What's Next gives yous a quick look at upcoming events in an easy-to-read timeline, also seen as a homescreen widget and standalone application.

The iconic Android notification pane is dissever into two on the MeMO Pad 7. Swiping downwards on the left one-half of the status bar reveals all your organisation notifications, while swiping on the right half brings upwards quick toggles and a effulgence slider. Some of the toggles open apps, like the camera and calculator, while others control settings like Wi-Fi and ability saving manner. The selection of quick toggles is useful, but naught I haven't seen before.

AudioWizard is one of the app shortcuts in the notification pane, and it gives you a pocket-sized amount of control over the device'due south audio processing. Y'all tin can cull between music, gaming and picture show oriented modes, and it does make a slight difference. That said, information technology'southward not something I really felt needed adjusting; keeping it on music mode is perfectly fine.

There's several other Asus-fabricated applications loaded onto the MeMO Pad 7, including WebStorage for managing your cloud storage on Asus' service, SuperNote and Quick Memo for note taking, Story for organizing photos into digital albums, and a few other Asus services. While it'south good to see some apps similar these included on the device, none of them are standouts and you could quite hands notice meliorate versions in the Play Shop.

While the app offering on the MeMO Pad seven isn't spectacular, it's not a large deal when you consider you lot can install many tablet-specific applications from the Google Play Shop. A lot of these apps are specifically optimized for 7-inch devices like the Pad seven, then just infrequently will you come beyond an app that'south incompatible with the tablet-sized display.

Battery Life

The internal 15 Wh battery is typical for a tablet of this size: it's the aforementioned capacity as the battery constitute in the 2013 Nexus seven, and but one Wh less than the 2012 version. Through my short time using the MeMO Pad 7 I experienced the bombardment life to be average in actual apply. When the tablet was sitting effectually in standby mode, the bombardment seemed to bleed faster than on other tablets I've used, which could exist a byproduct of the x86 SoC inside.

Don't take my word for information technology though, below you'll find a few results from my bombardment benchmarks.

Bated from these few tests, I also recorded a charge time from a 10W charger of over three and a half hours, which is pretty slow in a world with Qualcomm Quick Charge devices. The charger included in the box is simply 7W as well, and then it could charge even slower if you don't have a more powerful one bachelor. GFXBench too indicates the tablet would only terminal 195 minutes in intense 3D gaming.