You might remember last year at CES in Las Vegas, ASUS teased us with a Tegra 3, 7-inch Tablet for just $249. Which later became known as the almighty, and powerful Nexus 7. It now appears that ASUS is preparing yet another cheap, 7-inch tablet for CES which is just under 2 months away now. Many rumors are saying that this device will be a Nexus device, but other’s are saying this might be an ASUS device. Perhaps a cheaper Transformer tablet.
Today, iAfrica is reporting that ASUS is working on a device with the model number ME-172V. This device is said to see in that region for 2000 ZAR, which is about $226 for those of us in the US. But when comparing the price to the 16GB Nexus 7, it sells for 3000 ZAR ($340), so if this device comes to the US it’ll probably be a bit cheaper.
The specs are:
- 7-inch display; 1024×600 resolution
- WM8950 processor
- Mali 400 GPU
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB Storage
- Micro SD support
- 1MP front-facing camera
- 4270mAh battery
Not horrible specs, but if ASUS wants it to sell well they’ll need to sell it between $99-150 or it’ll be dead on arrival. Especially since the specs of the Nexus 7 are even better and start at $199 for the 8GB of that particular tablet. Just to refresh your memory on the Nexus 7’s specs, here they are:
- 7-inch HD IPS display at 1280×800 resolution
- quad-core Tegra 3 processor
- 1GB of RAM
- 8/16GB internal storage
- no micro SD card support
- 1.2MP front-facing camera
- NFC
- 4325mAh battery
- Android 4.2 – Jelly Bean
So many of the spec’s are similar, but it’ll be interesting to see this tablet come from ASUS and see what they are asking for it. You can be sure that we’ll keep you updated on this device. It would be interesting to see this device make a debut at CES in January 2013.
Please remember that this is to be treated as a rumor or a leak. And that nothing is official on this ME-172V device. So take this information with a grain of salt.
If this is priced cheaper than the Nexus 7, would you think about picking it up? Let us know in the comments below.