Hands-on: ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7

After the announcement yesterday, we were able to squeeze our way through tons of media peeps and do a quick hands-on on the new ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7.

The tablet feels slightly different from the ones before it. The body is a tad thinner and lighter which makes it more pleasing to the hands. There’s also a change in shell from the grooved back to a smooth and glossy back panel. As expected, the panel is a fingerprint magnet but it provides a decent grip when held.

ASUS retains the same button layout on the first MeMO Pad wherein the three buttons (Power/Wake, Volume Up and Volume Down) are located at the upper right hand side. At the top is where the audio jack and micro-USB ports are located. The micro-SD card is situated at the left side, isolated from any external components.

The front panel houses the 7-inch HD display which is accompanied by 1.2MP camera. Meanwhile, the 5MP main camera is located at the back flanked by a pair of speakers on each side.

The ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7 runs on Android Jelly bean right out the gate and which will be handled by the tandem of quad-core MediaTek processor and 1GB of RAM. During the short demo done by the ASUS rep, we noticed that the tablet ran smoother as opposed to the previous release. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do our usual benchmarking tests as it was prohibited by the ASUS rep.

Once it becomes available in the market, it will be offered in four different color (Pink, Lime Green White and Black) and will set you back USD129PHP 7,570INR 10,933EUR 123CNY 939 for the 8GB version and additional 20 bucks for the 16GB one.