Asus MeMO Pad 8 vs Apple iPad mini Hands On

Asus announced the MeMO Pad 8 (ME180A) at the IFA 2013 in Berlin last week. Apple launched the iPad mini, the company’s first 7.9 inch display last year. Since these two tablets are almost similar in the size, we managed do a hands on comparison at the IFA. The Asus MeMO Pad 8 has a 8-inch HD LED Backlit IPS multi-touch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixel at 188 ppi pixel density. The iPad mini has a 7.9-inch LED Backlit IPS multi-touch display with a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixel at 162 ppi pixel density. The Memo Pad 8 uses a quad-core quad-core MediaTek MT8125 Cortex A7 chip clocked at 1.6 GHz with PowerVR SGX5 series GPU and runs on Android 4.2.2, while the iPad mini comes with a dual-core Cortex A7 chip with PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU and runs on iOS 6.

Both these devices feature a 5MP rear camera. The Memo Pad 8 has 720p video recording, while the iPad mini supports video recording up to 1080p. Both the tablets have 1.2MP HD front-facing camera.  The Memo Pad is 9.95 mm thick and weighs 350 grams, while the iPad mini is relatively thinner at 7.2 mm and lighter at 308 grams. Connectivity wise both the device comes with WiFi and Bluetooth, but the iPad mini has WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n Wi‑Fi with dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) support and has Bluetooth 4.0 and also comes in 3G variant, which is better.

The Memo Pad 8 comes in 8 GB and 16GB variants with a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 64GB. The iPad mini comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants and the pricing differs. The Memo Pad 8′s speaker is present on the back, while the iPad has a loudspeaker  on the bottom. Asus Memo Pad 8 has a 3,950 mAh battery with up to 9 hours of battery life, while the iPad mini’s 16.3-watt-hour battery promises up to 10 hours battery life.