ASUS Eee Pad MeMo 171 On Sale In Taiwan, Gets Benchmarked

The last time we heard about the ASUS Eee Pad Memo 171 was at CES 2012, with it being shown off along with the MeMo 370T (now rumored to be the Nexus tablet). Things have been quiet since then, but it turns out that if you're living in Taiwan, you can buy one right now. Netbooknews managed to get their hands on the 7-inch tablet and took it for a spin, giving a video demo of the device as well as running the customary benchmarks.

Netbooknews purchased one for the high price of 17,500NT (~$585), although specs seem to be as they were at CES. The 7-inch IPS display has a 1280x800 resolution, along with a 1.2Ghz dual-core Snapdragon S3 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, five megapixel rear camera, and 1.2 megapixel front facing camera. The battery is rated at 4,400mAh, which ASUS say should provide 8.5 hours of video playback. Currently the tablet is running Android 3.2, Honeycomb, although an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich has been promised.

In terms of benchmarks, the MeMo 171 scored 24fps on NenaMark 2, Quadrant came in at around 1800, and AnTuTu gave a score of 4377. Not exactly blistering speeds, but that's to be expected running a last-generation Qualcomm chip. While it's not a performance powerhouse, the MeMo does seem to work well with the included stylus, allowing you to doodle or take notes, as well as featuring handwriting recognition that converts your words to text.

Also included with the MeMo 171 is a Bluetooth handset that has a transparent OLED display, although Netbooknews didn't get a chance to test that properly thanks to a lack of battery charge out of the box.