14 DAY TRIAL // Intel has announced its intention at pushing its Bay Trail platform into cheap and extremely cheap tablets and it didn't take long before hints of the first models started appearing online.
Intel is aiming to provide a low-power inexpensive alternative to ARM-based tablet processors and several Chinese makers have already announced or teased some Android slates bundling the new Bay Trail chips.
Now it’s time for the first brand vendors to do the same. ASUS, for one, is apparently getting ready to produce its own line of Android slates with Bay Trail processors, priced around a wallet-friendly $149 / €108.
According to MobileGeeks, several US retailers have already listed the ASUS ME176 tablet, a product that runs an Intel Atom Z3745 processor and Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box. The German publication hypothesizes that this might be the upcoming MeMO Pad 7.
The ME176 will be a 7-inch tablet with pretty average specifications, including 1GB of RAM and just 8GB of internal storage. But on the up side of things, it will have Android 4.4 KitKat and IPS screens with wide-viewing angle.
The processor inside the tablet is a 64-bit quad-core 1.33GHz one. It comes equipped with 311 MHz Ivy Bridge graphics (with speeds up to 778 MHz). The Atom Z3745 chip is actually an x86 processor capable of supporting up to 4GB of RAM.
As you might remember, the ME176C (or K013) has already been spotted at the FCC. We talked about the K013 a while ago, telling you this was an upcoming MeMO Pad model, coming with a 7-inch IPS LCD display, 1280 x 800 pixels and running Android 4.4. KitKat out of the box.
There’s going to be a slighter larger model with an IPS 8-inch display too, but the rest of the specifications remain the same. The slate should sell in the US for around $199 / €144 a pop.
The ASUS MeMO Pads with Bay Trail processors should be expected to arrive somewhere around May, but we’re probably going to see the slates being officially announced at Computex. A 10.1-inch model should complete the line-up.
With the new MeMO Pad triad, ASUS will be able to complete with Samsung’s latest Galaxy Tab4 line-up which also includes 7- , 8- and 10-inch models.
Anyway, in a month or so we’re going to be able to compare Intel’s super budget tablets with similar offerings powered by low-cost ARM chips coming from low-cost companies like Allwinner, Rockchip and MediaTek, which should prove interesting.