Asus has made some great tablets of late, with the compact Fonepad and now the Memo Pad range hitting all the right notes. The Memo Pad FHD 10 is exactly what you’d expectr an Android tablet with a 10.1in Full HD IPS display – 1,920 x 1,200 to be precise. For £300, that isn’t bad at all.
The quality is decent, too. Although the maximum brightness isn’t quite up there with the best, the contrast ratio is good, and that high resolution gives a really crisp, sharp picture.
Compared to similar 10in tablets, the Asus is nice and light, and comfortable to hold for extended periods. We also prefer its soft, dimpled plastic finish to the stickier plastic of Google’s devices. A quick glance around the edges reveals a micro-HDMI output and a microSD slot for expanding the tablet’s generous 16GB of integrated storage.
It’s good so far, but there are flaws. Powering the FHD 10 is a dual-core 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor with 2GB of system RAM, and it runs Android 4.2.2. Navigating even hefty web pages feels smooth, as does the OS in general, but we were perturbed to discover that a degree of typing lag was in evidence. The benchmark results weren’t up there with the best, although we did get smooth gameplay in Real Racing 3. And there’s one big red flagr the processor is x86 based, which means it won’t be compatible with every app and game on Google Play. The impact will largely depend on your enthusiasm for gaming.
With solid battery life, and a good 5-megapixel rear camera, the Asus Memo Pad FHD 10 looks to be an attractive choice if you like your tablets big. It has plenty of storage and a slot to add more; it has a solid, all-round design and its performance is good enough, if not stellar. Whether all that’s enough to overlook the many excellent, smaller devices will depend on your budget.
