Late in September we reported rumors emanating from Taiwan about a budget priced US$99 ASUS Google Nexus 7 tablet. After The Nexus 7 lineup refresh late in October it seemed like the $99 ASUS tablet may have been just wishful thinking. However, this weekend such a device may have been spotted “in the wild” or rather appearing in the GLBenchmark online benchmarks. The new tablet is definitely an ASUS, model name ME172V, but it remains to be seen if it is a Nexus device.
"I can neither confirm nor deny existence of the ASUS ME172V"
Specs from the GL Benchmark suite show that the ASUS ME172V has specs cut down just about enough compared to the Nexus 7 to enable it to be priced at the magical $99 figure. Interestingly the specs indicate the new tablet will come with a MicroSD card slot, a fact that goes against the Google Nexus experience; this could just be an ASUS solo effort.
Let us look at the ASUS ME172V specs as they appear on the benchmark listing;
- 1GHz processor (doesn’t say how many cores)
- Mali 400 graphics chip
- 1024x600 screen res
- Android 4.1.1
- Storage capacity options unknown except for existence of a MicroSD card slot
Looking at the online GLBenchmark comparison to the Nexus 7 the ASUS ME127V scores quite poorly. Many ASUS ME127V benchmark test results are less than half as good as the Nexus 7. Here is the comparison table. Also I checked it against the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Amazon device seemed to be a better performer.
Overall, looking through the specs and performance figures the ASUS ME172V doesn’t look that exciting. We haven’t heard anything official from ASUS or Google about it; it may even be a faked benchmark result. If launched it could be an attractive branded alternative to many generic Chi-tabs that are on the market, it depends a lot on the price.
