ASUS MeMO Pad HD7 Review: $149 Nexus 7.1 Successor & Our First Look at MediaTek's MT8125
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 29, 2013 3:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Asus
- Mobile
- Android 4.2
- MeMO Pad
Battery Life
The MeMO Pad HD7 includes a 15Wh battery, a ~6% reduction compared to what was in the Nexus 7. The MT8125 SoC on the other hand is likely built on GF's 28nm process, potentially giving it a process advantage over NVIDIA's Tegra 3. There's much more to the platform power consumption story however. Differences in CPU architectures, efficiency of implementation and the surrounding non-CPU IP blocks all play a role in how efficient the MediaTek SoC is.
Normalizing for differences in battery capacity, the MeMO Pad HD7 lasts about 10% less on a single charge than the Nexus 7. Despite being on a lower power process, the MT8125 doesn't seem to be any more power efficient than NVIDIA's Tegra 3. I'm not sure how much of this is a Cortex A7 vs. Cortex A9 thing, and how much of it is the MT8125 just being optimized for cost and not power consumption.
The video playback results are also appreciably lower than the original Nexus 7. I couldn't find any documentation or indication of what video decode IP MediaTek used in the MT8125 but I did notice relatively high CPU utilization during video decode. In the same scenes where Tegra 3's Cortex A9s were running at low utilization/frequencies, I saw 20 - 50% and 1.2GHz on one of the MT8125's A7s.
MT8125
The one area where the MeMO Pad HD7 ends up more power efficient than the Tegra 3 based Nexus 7 is in our 3D battery life test. Both platforms run Egypt HD at similar performance levels (the T30L Nexus 7 is 15% faster on average), but the MT8125 based MeMO Pad HD7 lasts almost 40% longer. If you normalize for battery capacity, the advantage is even greater. GLB's 3D battery life test has the highest power draw of anything else we run, pointing to idle power optimizations as the biggest problem with the MT8125. What we're seeing here could also be a testament to Imagination Tech's power efficiency advantage over the Tegra 3 GPU.
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Qwertilot - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
A bit scary really this. Judged objectively, this thing is a big percentage - 80? - per cent of an ideal small tablet and the new Nexus 7 is a bigger one. Huge improvements would need battery breakthroughs. Yet they're both down at very low prices.Budget PCs really do seem to have an awful lot further to come.
HighTech4US - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Anand why on the "ASUS 7-inch Tablet Specification Comparison" chart (or anywhere in the review) are the different sensors each tablet has (or doesn't have) not mentioned?Because of the lack of complete specifications I have to dig deeper on other sites to get a complete picture of what each Tablet offers. That really shouldn't happen.
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Again a lack of sensors, especially GPS really make these lower cost tablets not very useful.
No GPS means NO Google Maps.
Arbie - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
It's great that this Asus tablet has micro-SD. I won't even consider a tablet that doesn't. It is hugely quicker to swap media sets in and out using SD than any other way. For my uses, the size of internal memory is much less important.Regarding SD formatting, here's a utility that let me put a 64GB card in an circa 2009 media player. Get it at: http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?fat32fo...
Arbie - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
Also, Anand, the presence or lack of micro-SD should appear in the "Basic Tablet Specification Comparison" table. This is really important to people, even if Google and Amazon downplay it for their own marketing reasons. Just look at the number of comments on this topic.Wwhat - Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - link
I don't think the absence of SD-card slots on google's devices has anything to do with cost whatsoever, SD-card slots are easy and cheap and available on the lowest of budget devices,It's more an attempt to force people to do everything through (google-)cloud storage I think, as the article states
And yes it's stupid and I'd even say nasty since it would cost them next to nothing to add it.
'don't be evil'? I think there is a reason they abandoned that mantra.
The question now is: What can we the consumers do about it? Are there attachment you can connect to the nexus to add a SD slot without the thing getting too ridiculously messy? Anybody know?
user777 - Thursday, August 1, 2013 - link
I have Nexus 7 2012 and there is no problem to use USB OTG cable + USB stick (or Transcend USB stick with microSD+SD card slot). I use Total Commander+USB Stick plugin (free). It is possible to open any doc/pdf/jpeg/avi/mp4 file.It is possible to share any folder or external HDD at your laptop and to use like WiFi Network LAN storage using ES File Explorer. It is possible to play any movie using streaming (without downloading) from the Network LAN storage (MX Player or BS Player). It is even possible playing movie from WiFi FTP server.
n13L5 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Quoting the Article: "Google was pretty adamant against including a microSD slot in the original Nexus 7 (preferring a combination of internal and cloud storage), but ASUS put one back in the design of the MeMO Pad HD7."Good Asus, bad Google, stop being evil, k? Stupid cloud not always accessible.
evolucion8 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Hi, I have a question, which CPU monitoring software did you use to monitor the CPU usage during videoplayback? Looks sleek and lean!user777 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Smal mistake at the ASUS 7-inch Tablet Specification Comparison:ASUS Nexus 7 (2012) has 1.2MP front-facing camera
user777 - Wednesday, July 31, 2013 - link
Just got the official Android 4.3 upgrade on my Nexus 7 2012.Would be glad to see the performance of the new Android version 4.3 at the storage random write tests for the old Nexus 7 and new Memo Pad HD 7.