ASUS Memo Pad 8

The Asus Memo Pad 8 joined the Memo Pad 7 and 10in Transformer Pad in the Asus line-up in June 2014. At a very reasonable price of £169.99 but available for as little as £120 if you shop around, the Memo Pad 8 is a brilliant addition to the ever-growing and improving budget tablet market, competing with the likes of the Tesco Hudl 2, Amazon Kindle Fire HD and the Advent Vega.

The Asus MeMO Pad 8 is the slightly larger model. At 8.3mm thick and weighing 320g, it is both svelte and lightweight. Surprisingly, the MeMO Pad 8 is thinner than its 7in counterpart and only 25g heavier. In contrast, the Tesco Hudl2 is 9mm thick and 410g, and the difference can be felt when you hold the tablets side by side. The Hudl2 does have a fractionally larger screen, however.

At 8.3 by 4.9 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and 11.2 ounces, the ME181C is about the same size as the Galaxy Tab 4 8.0. That's a good thing, as both tablets are thin, light, and easy to handle. The plastic back of the ME181C has a textured, rubberized feel that provides a little extra grip.

The 8in screen is LED backlit and delivers 1,280 x 800 pixels. That’s far from ground-breaking, and when I sat the MeMO Pad 8 next to my Nexus 7, which packs 1,920 x 1,200 pixels into the smaller space of a 7in screen, the Asus came off notably worse.

The Asus Memo Pad ME181C is right now the 8 inch tablet to get if you don't have more than $200 to spend. For that kind of money it offers a nicely built body, a good IPS screen, fast hardware and Android 4.4 KitKat and about 7 hours of daily use on a charge. Too bad the performance is still a bit glitchy, despite the fast Intel platform inside.