Review: ASUS MeMo Pad Smart 10

I have had this electronic device for about six months now. I do not work for Asus or Google, and I’m not getting paid to write this. So I can give you an objective review of this Android tablet.

So far, I like it about as much as everyone said that I would. It’s good for surfing the internet and watching YouTube anywhere around the house. I took it on a trip and used the hotel’s Wi-Fi.

It came with the default browser and Chrome. I used them both and they are about the same. I like the default Android browser a little bit better because it seems like it was made for the touch screen interface more than Chrome. I have not tried any other web browsers.

I loaded several free games on it. Hungry Shark Evolution is fun on a tablet. You can play it on a phone, but it looks better on a larger screen. While I’m on the subject of larger screens, I purchased a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable. The games, YouTube app, and the web browser all look good on an HDTV.

I have some games for my child loaded on it. Some of them irritate me because they will jack up the device. They will pester you with notifications. I had a fish tank game on my smart phone that I had to delete because it started doing that.

This tablet is just like a first generation Nexus 7, except it is 10 inches and has a microSD card slot. It uses the same resolution of 1280x800. The screen uses the 16x10 ratio. So when you do use the HDMI cable to connect to a 16x9 HDTV, there are black bars on the sides and it slightly cuts the top and bottom off. I could not find anything in the TV’s or the tablet’s settings to correct that. When I hooked it up to my 1920x1200 PC monitor, it would only use 1280x800 pixels of the screen, but I did not try to play with the settings to get full screen.

One thing I really like is the fact that it does not require a fan. You can set the device on your lap, bed, or couch without worrying about blocking the cooling fan. I’m going to get my wife an x86 passively cooled laptop when one becomes available. I’ve heard that some of the new Haswell chips will be able to be passively cooled.

The ARM processor this tablet uses is somewhat limited. You can not play flash video with it. But it is plenty fast enough for Android games, YouTube, and web browsing. Using it is a lot like using a smart phone, except it is larger and faster.

In conclusion, I like it. I use it to browse the web almost every day before I go to sleep at night. Of course, I also have to get the daily reward on Hungry Shark Evolution as well. I need more of those video game gems!