The $200 Google Nexus 7 tablet by Asus has been a huge success in the second half of 2012, as evident by its ongoing “sold out” status on the Google Play Store this holiday season. Well, it seems Asus will be following up with a pair of Nexus 7-like tablets of its own, sans Google’s backing, of course.
The Asus ME172V tablet reportedly features a somewhat underwhelming VIA WM8950 (WonderMedia) 1GHz processor with 400MHz Mali GPU, 7-inch 1024×600 Twisted Nematic (TN) display, 1 GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera. The good news is that it will run Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box and it could be priced at an extremely affordable $99-130, which is a fraction of the price of the Nexus 7. Along with the confirmed specs, images of the device have leaked out today, revealing both black and white color options.
Information about a more impressive Asus-branded tablet was also leaked. The Asus ME371MG supposedly rocks a 7-inch 1280×800 IPS display, an Intel Atom Z2420 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a 3 megapixel camera, WiFi/3G connectivity, and it runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. This one could be priced in the $199-249 range.
The Asus ME172V and ME371MG tablets are expected to be announced and unveiled at CES 2013 in Las Vegas in early January (8-11). We’ll be in attendance at the conference, so hopefully we can nab some hands-on time with the two Android devices.
Source: NotebookItalia via SlashGear