Unboxing the Asus Memo Pad ME172V

I was just able to get my hands on this very affordable 7-inch Android tablet by Asus called Memo Pad ME172V. So I took the opportunity of sharing the unboxing experience with you and see what this slate has in store for us.

Upon the rise and success of 7-incher tablets such as the Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, many tech companies followed suit and launched their own versions of Android-powered tablets and one of the players in the industry is the Korea-based electronics giant Samsung which to date has released almost every tablet size we can think of. There were also some other manufacturers that tried their luck in the business and created a slate offering of their own. One of them is a Taiwanese tech firm, Asus. And one of theirs is the Asus Memo Pad ME172V.

After opening the box, I was greeted with the Memo Pad it self, (forgive the quality of the images as I was only using my iPhone's camera), embedded in the box which is big enough to hold the device and its accessories underneath.

Along with the Asus unit are the battery charger with the cord itself which is removable from the male plug that converts into a USB cable wire which can be used as a connector to a PC or laptop for file management and charging. There is also another USB cable wire that comes with these which is around 5 inches long that can be brought while on the go.

So that was only what's in the box, just three pieces of equipment plus the tiny product manual and a warranty card. There are three color options for the ME172V, gray, white and pink. I got the white one.

This Memo Pad is made entirely of plastic but the good thing is it does not let you feel you are using an Android device covered in a plastic made case and one of the great contributors to that feeling is the design of the back panel. If the tablet is facing you, on the upper left edge is where you can find the only physical buttons of the device which are the lock key and the volume rocker keys.

At the top of the device is where the 3.5mm audio jack is located and right across the bottom are the microSD slot which supports up to 32GB for memory expansion and beside it is the USB port which can be used both for battery charging and file management. (I am currently charging the device as the initial charging requires 8-hour straight charging before using on a battery mode as per manual).

There are only three things I don't really like about this Asus Memo Pad, there is no bluetooth, the back panel and the battery are non-removable, no rear camera and the microSD card slot is not user friendly as most of the time the memory card gets stuck inside and it's not easy to pull it out in case you need to. Unlike any other devices I have used which I only needed to push the memory card when it is embedded in the slot then it would just pop out.