Pricey Cruze Diesel scores stellar fuel economy

Cruising down the freeway at 65 mph in light traffic, the electroluminescent lettering of the 2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel began making remarkable claims, showing an average of over 50 mpg. Well over. I could see that it was going to take some time to move the fuel gauge needle off full.

This particular screen wasn't the typical trip computer, but Chevy's Eco screen, which recorded the best average over 50 miles. This screen turned driving into a game, trying to record the best average. Chevy should enable an online ladder where drivers can compare and compete.

That high freeway mileage shows the beauty of diesel, and the limits of EPA fuel economy testing. The Cruze Diesel's EPA mileage came in at 27 mpg city and 46 mpg highway. I handily beat the highway estimate, and ended up with a combined average, involving city and freeway driving, of 39.2 mpg. Most drivers should see mileage in the mid- to high 30s.

Last week, I wrote of the Mercedes-Benz GLK250 BlueTec that it could make Americans more likely to consider a diesel when vehicle shopping. Well, the Cruze Diesel can lay greater claim to tipping that balance, as it is more of a mass-market car. In the Cruze lineup, the diesel is the most expensive, but it is also the most powerful.

Basic compact sedan

The Cruze, competitive with the Honda Civic, is a small sedan, a recent and needed addition to Chevy's stable. It seats four with reasonable comfort, and can take a fifth passenger in the rear seat in a squeeze. The trunk looks remarkably big, considering the size of the car.

The styling of the Cruze won't set the world on fire. The bland design seems intended to appeal to the broadest swath of buyers, who generally don't want a car that will be noticed on the road. The conservative exterior look gets somewhat countered by a more stylish interior. Here, leather covers the seats and a nice two-tone band bows across the dashboard and around the front seating area.

This Eco display recorded the Cruze Diesel's best fuel economy average over 50 miles of freeway driving.

As to ride quality, the Cruze is decent for its class. Not particularly soft -- the suspension damps out the bumps reasonably well -- but lacking the solid feel of higher-end vehicles. The suspension engineering is fairly typical for a car with a base price below $20,000, using MacPherson struts up front but a modified torsion bar for the rear, nonpowered wheels.

No sports car, the Cruze Diesel tended to understeer, tires shrieking, when taking turns fast. And typical for the segment and most new cars, it uses electric power steering.

The diesel power plant under the hood is a 2-liter four-cylinder engine using a turbo, as most diesel passengers cars do, to give it decent acceleration. Horsepower comes in at 151, while torque is a nice 264 pound-feet. Diesels typically have high torque figures and lower horsepower.

Unfortunately, stamping the accelerator pedal doesn't unleash all the torque. In fact, nothing much happens at all, initially. It's as if the car, in a quest for fuel economy, enforces a waiting period on heavy acceleration, forcing you to rethink your driving strategy.

As I used my foot to insist I did want to accelerate, the Cruze Diesel eventually set off at a pretty good clip. But there certainly weren't going to be any front-wheel chirps. While under way, stepping into it to make a passing maneuver, the Cruze Diesel was also a little loath to take off. Passing other cars in an oncoming traffic lane didn't seem like a good idea in this car.

Chevy only offers the Cruze Diesel with this six-speed automatic.

Some of the blame likely goes to the one-choice-only six-speed automatic transmission. This gearbox does a good job of finding the best gear for fuel economy, and has a bit of descent programming built in, so that it geared down when I applied the brakes coming down a hill.

Putting it in manual mode and keeping the gears in second and third on a twisty mountain road, watching for that 5,000rpm redline, I was able to keep more immediate power on tap for the accelerator.

Another peculiar feature of diesels is that they make quite a bit of noise, even from a four-cylinder engine. With the Cruze Diesel idling, my photographer thought something was wrong with the car until I explained its engine. Gasoline cars don't make this kind of clatter, which might turn off some potential buyers.

At speed, most of the diesel clatter becomes overwhelmed by other road noises.

This green filler cap serves as a reminder of which pump to use at the fuel station.

To make the Cruze Diesel 50-state-legal for emissions, Chevy used an exhaust cleanup system similar to that of Mercedes-Benz. The car contains a 4.5-gallon tank of fluid that gets sprayed into the exhaust, cleaning up nitrogen oxides. Unfortunately, that means added maintenance, although a handy screen on the instrument cluster display alerts you when the tank needs a refill, which should be every 10,000 or 15,000 miles.

Standard LCD

Beyond excellent fuel economy, another perk of the Cruze Diesel is that it comes standard with a touch-screen LCD in the dashboard, although navigation remains optional. The example I reviewed did not come with navigation, but I was nonetheless very impressed with the other cabin tech features, which Chevy puts under the brand MyLink.

MyLink uses an icon-based main menu, like most smartphones, making it very intuitive to navigate. The only drawback with this type of system is that the menu screens can become crowded as Chevy adds more features. The Cruze Diesel had three screens' worth of icons, mostly audio sources. We saw a later version of Chevy's MyLink in the 2014 Impala that lets you rearrange the icons, again similar to a smartphone interface. That capability makes it easier to organize icons into categories, or by putting your most used on the first screen.

This icon-based display for the MyLink cabin tech system will be intuitive for smartphone users.

The MyLink touch screen proved very responsive, with features immediately launching as I chose them. If I didn't want to use the touch screen, the radio tuner dial let me select icons on the screen, with a push-button action to launch.

Voice command was also a very reasonable means of controlling some of the cabin electronics. For example, the phone screen showed the contact list from my Bluetooth-paired phone, but I rarely looked at it because I could merely hit voice command and tell it the name of the person I wanted to call.

Likewise, for USB audio sources and iOS devices, I could use voice command to request a particular artist or album.

For the audio screens, MyLink showed the same type of music library interface for my iPhone 5 and a USB drive I plugged into the car, with categories for song, album, artist, and genre. One feature I found really nice was a smart playlist built into the stereo. While listening to a song from a USB drive, I selected the "Play more like this" option, and the car built a playlist from similar songs. It worked very well, and freed me from having to select a new album every 40 minutes.

For online audio, this MyLink implementation offered Pandora and Stitcher. My iPhone was a little finicky with Pandora, as I had to have the phone cabled to the car with the screen unlocked. Android users should be able to run Pandora over Bluetooth. The Pandora interface not only let me see my preprogrammed station list, but also allowed me to give songs a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.

Other audio sources included Bluetooth streaming audio and satellite radio.

Chevy makes a nine-speaker Pioneer audio system available in the Cruze Diesel as an upgrade, but this model only had the stock six-speaker system. This stereo was weak on power but had good definition. It was one of the better six-speaker systems I have heard, but it didn't give that extra oomph, which would have really made music enjoyable.

Chevy brings fuel price data into Cruze Diesel through satellite radio, but this screen lacks utility without the nav option.

Weather and fuel price apps sit among the audio icons on the MyLink screen, both powered by the satellite radio connection into the car. Weather shows current conditions and five-day forecast for specific regions. The fuel prices app lists the per-gallon price for stations near the car's location, and can be set to show regular, premium, or, most useful in the Cruze Diesel, diesel.

However, without the navigation option in the car, I was left having to manually enter a fuel station's address into my phone's nav app.

Like other GM cars, the Cruze Diesel comes equipped with OnStar, which includes a turn-by-turn navigation service. Using the blue button on the rearview mirror frame, you could get an OnStar operator to send directions to the car for any of the fuel stations that come up.

Of course, OnStar offers many other functions, such as roadside emergency services and stolen-vehicle recovery. It is one of the oldest telematics services in the business, with many subscribers.

With the Cruze Diesel, owners can use the OnStar Remote Link smartphone app to see the maintenance information, remotely unlock the doors, and even look up destinations and send turn-by-turn directions to the car.

The green pump

The 2014 Chevrolet Cruze Diesel obviously stands out for its excellent fuel economy, but is mitigated somewhat by the fact that diesel tends to cost about the same as premium gasoline, and that it is the most expensive model in the Cruze lineup. The clatter of the diesel engine might also throw off some potential buyers who prefer the quiet idling of the gasoline engine alternatives.

For comfort, the Cruze Diesel is about equivalent to other small sedans, such as the Honda Civic. Although bland in styling, it has a certain discreet practicality.

The MyLink system stands out as one of the better-performing cabin tech interfaces available right now. The various functions available on its touch screen come up without delay, and the icon format is easy to use. Ford can lay claim to having similar voice command functionality years before with Sync, but MyLink works equally well, showing that Chevy has caught up. OnStar, with its Remote Link app, will be the tech icing on the cake for Cruze Diesel drivers.

Tech specs
Model	2014 Chevrolet Cruze
Trim	Diesel
Power train	Turbocharged 2-liter four-cylinder diesel engine, six-speed automatic transmission
EPA fuel economy	27 mpg city/46 mpg highway
Observed fuel economy	39.2 mpg
Navigation	Optional flash-memory-based system
Bluetooth phone support	Standard
Digital audio sources	Pandora, Bluetooth streaming, iOS integration, USB drive, satellite radio
Audio system	Optional Pioneer 250-watt nine-speaker system
Driver aids	Optional blind-spot monitor, backup camera
Base price	$25,695
Price as tested	$27,505

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Finally, an SSD that has almost everything

There are three important things you should keep in mind when buying a solid-state drive: capacity, performance, and pricing. And the new Samsung 840 Evo makes things easy by offering them all, and more.

The new drive is a replacement for Samsung's previous entry-level 840 Series drive, but the only thing entry-level about it is the pricing. Its performance is among the best I've seen, and the drive is also the first consumer-grade SSD to hit the 1TB mark in storage space. In addition, the 840 Evo is bundled with valuable software that further boosts its performance.

At the current price of well under $1 per gigabyte -- the 1TB capacity costs just $650, or about 65 cents per gigabyte -- the Samsung 840 Evo is the best deal on the market now, ranking at the top of the current best SSD list. If you're looking for an SSD to upgrade your computer's hard drive with or want to upgrade your existing SSD to a larger-capacity drive, the 840 Evo is as good as it gets.

The new Samsung 840 Evo shares the same design and standard as previous generations, but now comes in gray.

Design

The Samsung 840 Evo looks the same as the older 840 Series, but now comes in dark gray. The drive supports the popular 7-millimeter, 2.5-inch design and features the latest SATA 3 (6Gbps) standard. It also works with previous versions of the SATA standard.

Drive type	7mm-thick, 2.5-inch standard internal drive
Connector type	SATA 6Gbps (compatible with SATA 3Gbps and SATA 1.5Gbps)
Capacities	120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB
Review capacity	750GB
Controller	Samsung MEX controller
NAND flash memory	1x nm Samsung Toggle DDR 2.0
Sequential read:	Up to 540MBps
Sequential write:	Up to 520MBps (250GB/500GB/750GB/1TB), and up to 410MBps (120GB)
4KB Random read (QD1):	Up to 10,000 IOPS
4KB Random write (QD1):	Up to 33,000 IOPS
4KB Random read (QD32):	Up to 98,000 IOPS (500GB/750GB/1TB); up to 97,000 IOPS; (250GB); up to 94,000 IOPS (120GB)
4KB Random write (QD32):	Up to 90,000 IOPS (500GB/750GB/1TB); up to 66,000 IOPS (250GB); up to 35,000 IOPS (120GB)
Encryption	AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption (FDE)
Weight	1.9 ounces
Reliability	MTBF: 1.5 million hours
Warranty	3 years limited

The drive is available in five capacities, 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB, all of which come with the Samsung Data Migration Tool and Samsung Magician Software included. The former is an advanced cloning program that helps you move data from one drive to another without having to reinstall the operating system or software; and the latter is a set of powerful tools for customizing the drive.

The Desktop Kit includes all you need to upgrade your computer's existing drive to a new 840 Evo.

To help make life even easier for upgraders, the drive is also available in a Desktop Kit version for the 120GB and 250GB capacities, and a Laptop Kit version for the 250GB and 500GB capacities, respectively costing $15 more and $10 more than if you buy just the SSD itself. The Desktop Kit includes a drive bay converter caddy, a 2.5mm spacer to bring the thickness of the drive to the 9.5mm standard, a CD of software, and a USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter. The Laptop Kit consists of just the software, the spacer, and the USB 3.0-to-SATA adapter.

With either of these kits, folks can quickly clone their computer's existing hard drive to an 840 Evo, without having to get extra equipment. The software CD contains the above-mentioned Samsung Data Migration Tool and Samsung Magician Software, which can also be downloaded from Samsung's Web site.

Useful software, flexible configuration

Like previous Samsung SSDs, the 840 Evo doesn't come with overprovisioning out of the box. Instead you can turn this feature on and off using the Samsung Magician Software. Overprovisioning is a feature that uses part of an SSD's storage space to enhance the drive's performance. Thanks to this, the 840 Evo offers the flexibility to choose between maximum speed or capacity.

Using the Samsung Magician Software, you can also check the SSD's health status and securely erase its data, or tune up the operating system settings to maximize the drive's speed and endurance.

The new Samsung Magician Software comprises a lot of useful tools and makes the 840 Evo the most flexible SSD on the market.

Modern and performance-oriented software and hardware features

There are a couple of things that help make the 840 Evo so fast.

Firstly, Samsung Magician now offers a new function, introduced in the 840 Evo, called Rapid mode, which can be turned on or off with a click. When on, Rapid automatically uses part of the host computer's system memory (RAM) as cache to further boost the drive's performance. Depending on the available RAM, Rapid uses between 500MB and 2GB for this purpose. In my test, Rapid indeed significantly improved the drive's performance.

Secondly, in the area of hardware, the new drive uses a new and improved Samsung MEX controller, which is based on the three-core MDX controller used in the 840 Pro, and its fast Toggle DDR 2.0 NAND flash memory. The drive also has improved firmware to deliver significantly faster performance than the 840 Series.

And finally, the 840 Evo supports a feature called TurboWrite Technology, which, depending on the capacities involved, offers double or triple the sequential write performance of the 840 Series. With Turbo Write, part of the solid-state drive is made of single-layer cell (SLC) NAND flash memory, the type of NAND used mostly in high-end enterprise SSDs. This part is used as a buffer for writing. Basically, data gets written on the buffer first and will then be moved to other parts of the SSD when the drive becomes idle. Since in real-world usage an SSD is idle most of the time, Turbo Write works very effectively.

And speaking of idle, the 840 Evo uses very little power when not in use, just 0.045 watt, compared with the 0.5 watt of a regular hard drive or certain SSDs. (The 840 Series uses 0.046 watt.) This makes the new drive a great fit for laptop users.

In my trials, the Samsung 840 Evo worked well with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. For better performance it's recommended that you use the latest version of the OSes that support the TRIM command, such as Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6 or later. Note, however, that the drive's bundled software only works with Windows.

Rapid mode uses part of the system's memory (RAM) to further boost the 840 Evo's performance.

Cost per gigabyte and warranty

Pricing is always the biggest concern when it comes to SSDs, but the 840 Evo delivers. The drive's five capacities of 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB cost $110, $190, $370, $530, and $650, respectively. Except for the 120GB capacity, which costs about 92 cents per gigabyte, these are all less than 80 cents per gigabyte. And again, the 1TB capacity is even less per gigabyte, at just 65 cents.

It's fair to say that the 840 Evo brings SSD pricing lower than ever. It's likely its price will get even lower the longer the drive is on the market.

It's worth noting that the 840 Evo comes with only a three-year warranty, not the five-year of the 840 Pro and some other high-end drives. But three years is rather standard for a drive that's categorized as entry-level.

Performance

I actually compared the 840 Evo against other high-end SSDs and it was impressive. The test computer took just about 10 seconds to boot up and about half of that to shut down. The drive also helped the machine resume from sleep-mode almost instantly. Applications, including heavy ones, such as games, also took much less time to load than when the computer was running on a hard drive.

The Evo offered much faster write speed than read speed, scoring 267MBps for writing and 184MBps for reading, in a straightforward data-copying test. When working as a main storage drive hosting the operating system and performing both writing and reading small files at the same time, the drive managed 257MBps. All of these speeds were really fast compared with the other drives' performance.

Yet the drive was even faster with Rapid turned on, scoring 289MBps for writing, 193MBps for reading, and an impressive 378MBps combined, the best I've seen

With PCMark 8, the 840 Evo scored 4,967 Storage points, and 4,990 points with Rapid turned on. Its reading score was lower than other high-end drives', but the 840 Evo was among the fastest in the other categories.

The new SSD also increased the battery life of a computer by about 25 minutes compared with a regular 7,200rpm laptop hard drive, in my anecdotal testing.

Conclusion

With fast overall performance, affordable prices, and a top storage capacity of 1TB, the Samsung 840 Evo has almost everything you'd look for in an internal storage device. What could be improved, namely the slightly slow sequential read speed and the relatively short three-year warranty, are just a minor shortcomings that don't change the fact that the drive is the best deal on the market now. The new drive opens up a new and exciting chapter in which solid-state drives are comparable to regular hard drives in terms of capacity and even pricing, while remaining so much faster in performance.

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Vivid screen barely outshines slow performance

The good: The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 rocks an impressively colorful screen, features a bevy of useful customization options, and comes in at a budget price.

The bad: Its performance is mediocre and the touch screen is sometimes unresponsive. The plastic build gives it a toy-like feel and it isn't very comfortable to hold. The dull design lacks panache.

The bottom line: For those looking to save a buck, for its low price, the Asus Memo Pad HD 7 has a bevy of useful features, though there are better performing options out there.

With the Asus Memo Pad HD 7, you really get what you pay for. The HD 7 earns its low price with a lackluster design and sluggish performance. It's not very comfortable to hold for long periods of time, and aside from being offered in a variety of different colors, lacks a coolness other tablets try hard to aspire to.

Its performance is meekly mediocre, and consistent lagging combined with a sometimes unresponsive touch screen make the tablet best suited for simple tasks like browsing and reading.

That said, the HD 7 is a refreshing upgrade from its predecessor and its best feature is the 7-inch IPS screen that displays an impressively wide range of colors which facilitate a visually richer experience than the original Nexus 7.

If you're on a strict budget, the Asus Memo Pad is an inexpensive and functional small tablet, but if you can spare the change, a new Nexus 7 is the better choice.

Design

Even though the tablet shares similar dimensions with the Nexus 7, it's nowhere near as sleek or comfortable in design. The tablet fits fine in one hand, even for people with smaller hands like me, yet, despite its light weight, the design doesn't lend itself to comfortable holding over lengthy periods of time.

The back panel protrudes slightly, and the corners slightly dig into your palms when holding it in both hands, instead of the flush, smoothly curved edges of the original Nexus 7. I often found myself wanting to put the device down after using it for awhile -- not because I was done using it -- but because holding it became tiresome.

The white version's back is so reflective you can't see the Asus logo.

The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 comes in navy blue, white, hot pink, and lime green. The navy blue version is the only one that has a back with a matte finish. The dark shade of blue attracts a minimal amount of fingerprints that are only highly visible from certain angles. The back panel is smooth and comfortable to the touch but can be a bit slippery without a tight grip.

In comparison, the reflective plastic backsides of the other colors looks less chic, but its texture helps one grip the device significantly better than the matte finish does. I personally prefer a back panel with a grippier texture, like the Nexus 7 (2012), because it enhances my comfort level in a way that extends the amount of time I can hold the device.

The volume rocker's function doesn't change when orientations switch.

Since they're both made by Asus, the Memo Pad HD 7 and the Nexus 7 (2012) share similar design elements. The power button and volume rocker on the right edge look almost identical in shape, while the rear speakers are similarly located towards the bottom edge of the tablet.

Tested spec	Asus Memo Pad HD 7	Google Nexus 7 (2012)	Apple iPad Mini	Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Weight in pounds	0.66	0.74	0.68	0.86
Width in inches (landscape)	7.8	7.8	7.9	7.7
Height in inches	4.7	4.7	5.3	5.4
Depth in inches	0.4	0.4	0.3	0.4
Side bezel width in inches (landscape)	0.9	0.8	0.25	0.9

The front of the tablet is typically simple, with an Asus logo on the bottom bezel and a front-facing camera on the top. There is no ambient light sensor, therefore no automatic brightness setting.

All of the ports are located on the top half of the tablet.

The Memo Pad HD 7's headphone jack, microphone pinhole, and Micro-USB port are all located on the top edge, with the microSD expansion slot -- which is expandable up to 32GB -- around the corner on the left edge. There are no ports on the bottom edge, but the speaker sits on the bottom of the tablet's back, keeping the 5-megapixel rear camera on top company.

Asus Application Suite

The tablet comes loaded with the Asus Application Suite and features apps that range from useful to creative. The simple additions include a calendar, to-do list, and file manager, and it comes with 16GB of Asus WebStorage cloud service for one year.

The Asus Application Suite comes pre-organized.

Some of the apps that are geared towards family use include App Locker, which allows you to put passwords on specific apps; Asus Artists, where you can create "paintings" or greeting cards; and Asus Story, which helps you organize your photos into albums, or as they call them, "stories."

The tablet comes with Power Saver, a battery saving feature that comes in handy if you're trying to squeeze the most out of a low battery.

The Power Saver app has a useful custom option.

The custom mode lets you pick the specific functions that the power-saving option affects. For example, you can set a low screen brightness for listening to music, a higher one for watching video, and no power-saving function for reading books. When enabled, it significantly helped extend the battery life when it was low and the highly customizable options.

Floating apps

One of the most interesting and useful features on the tablet is the floating menu. On the Android navigation bar, there's a button to the left of the back button that activates the floating menu.

When activated, a small menu pops up above the navigation bar that contains a selection of floating apps that you can quickly access without having to close whatever app you're currently using. Since the apps "float" on the screen, on top of whatever is already open, it's almost like a multiwindow option, but they can only perform simple tasks and can't compare to the multiwindow functions that the Microsoft Surface or some of the Samsung Galaxy tablets provide.

Using the floating apps, I was able to procrastinate and be productive at the same time!

Floating apps are an easy way to multitask, and I liked the ability to use the browser while watching video, but not all streaming video services continue to play while a floating app is open. With the exception of a few floating apps, including the calculator and compass, Netflix did not let me use most of the floating apps while simultaneously watching video, although YouTube did.

Despite providing an easy way to multitask, the floating apps don't have the same functionality as the fullscreen app and are limited in their capabilities; the YouTube app only shows recommended videos -- you can't search -- and the Twitter app displays only one tweet at a time. There is a limited amount of floating apps, and although the floating menu is customizable, not all downloaded apps have the ability to be floating ones.

Speaker features

The Memo Pad HD 7 houses stereo speakers with Asus SonicMaster audio technology and Audio Wizard software. Although the speakers aren't great, the number of specific audio settings are. The tablet allows you to manually adjust separate volume settings for app audio, notifications, and alarms.

The ability to easily control different volume settings was very useful.

In addition, using the Audio Wizard feature is an almost essential tool for a multimedia experience, if using the speakers (Audio wizard doesn't work with wired or Bluetooth headsets) it has five settings: music, movie, gaming, speech, and recording. These settings not only enhance the audio for their specific purposes but they also generally increase the volume of the speakers.

When the Audio Wizard function is not in use, it switches to power saving mode and, like most tablet speakers, audio is tinny at its loudest volume. The natural cupping of the speaker that happens when holding the tablet in two hands helps provide some fullness to the audio -- or muffling, depending on how you're gripping it.

The back speaker resonates when on a flat surface.

Movie mode makes the audio rich with subtleties. Soundscape noises like street traffic, footsteps, and the jingling of keys were all more pronounced using the movie mode. When the setting is off, most soundscape noises are almost muted and too quiet to notice.

The music setting works best with vocal-centered music that isn't over-produced. Music mode significantly enhances and highlights vocals. Without the setting, music sounded overall flat and comparable to FM radio. For certain genres the vocals overpowered the instrumentation.

In some cases, where the vocals were already at the forefront of the song, the enhancement was too much and made well-produced songs sound like amateur Garageband demos. This was especially true for any lo-fi music.

Audio Wizard came in handy as a floating app.

Certain instruments such as screeching guitars or crashing cymbals were unpleasant to listen to at full volume on a flat surface, but bearable from a distance and at low volumes. Bass heavy music sadly lacked oomph, and I found the recording mode to provide a better, fuller sound for that type of music.

Hardware

The Memo Pad HD 7 houses a 1.2GHz quad-core Mediatek MT8125 CPU, a single-core PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU, 1GB RAM, and 16GB of internal storage, with about 11GB of free space. The tablet also features an accelerometer and Bluetooth 4.0.

The tablet has a front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera with a rear 5-megapixel shooter on the back. The front-facing photos were washed-out but relatively clear.

Neither of the cameras were impressive.

The rear camera has many built-in features like HDR, panorama, and color filters, but they don't cover up the camera's poor photo quality. It didn't take very sharp photos and often had a hard time focusing on a subject.

Screen

The Memo Pad HD 7 dons the same 1,280x800-pixel resolution as the first Nexus 7, at 216 ppi, and, in comparison to both Nexus 7s, its viewing angles aren't as good, but its accurate color portrayal, even without using Asus Splendid calibration software, blows the Google tablets our of the water.

When it comes to screen quality between the original Nexus 7 and the Memo Pad HD 7, the difference is in the details. Its screen is just as sharp as the original Nexus 7, but due to the wide range of color, bright spots that are too bright and blown-out on the Nexus 7 are accurately portrayed with detail on the Memo HD Pad 7. Color richness and accuracy provides more nuanced detail in photos and videos that is only greatly noticeable when viewed side-by-side.

Tested spec	Asus Memo Pad HD 7	Google Nexus 7 (2012)	Apple iPad Mini	Amazon Kindle Fire HD
Maximum brightness	353 cd/m2	288 cd/m2	399 cd/m2	394 cd/m2
Maximum black level	0.57 cd/m2	0.28 cd/m2	0.49 cd/m2	0.41 cd/m2
Maximum contrast ratio	619:1	1,028:1	814:1	960:1

The new Nexus 7 has a 30 percent wider range of colors than the first model, but it still doesn't compare to the wide range that the Memo Pad HD 7 produces. The colors are vibrant but not oversaturated, and the detail in video and images due to the wide range of colors is dramatic and impressive for such an inexpensive tablet.

The screen's responsiveness to touch wasn't always on point. It sometimes didn't recognize my swipe or gesture, especially if the screen had any type of oily substance on it. Don't get me wrong -- it's not like I was eating chicken wings while using the tablet, but any type of slippery residue on your fingertips transferred onto the screen and caused a significant decrease in responsiveness.

Most of the downsides to the Memo Pad HD 7 are due to its cheap build, and its best feature is no exception. Smudges tend to be very visible on the screen and become distracting when combined with glare. It's easy to acquire a hazy layer of fingerprints, which make the screen appear noticeably more dull, and in comparison to the screens of other tablets, it takes a little more elbow grease to clean it well.

Performance

The Memo Pad HD 7 ships with Android Jelly Bean 4.2.1, although Asus states that an OTA update will be available by its early August U.S. release date. The update is supposed to significantly improve swiping, which is a much needed fix.

The tablet's performance is functional for most simple tasks but lacks speed. It usually lags, especially when switching orientations, and performance dramatically slows if many apps are open at one time.

The tablet functioned best when doing simple tasks like browsing and checking e-mail.

Aside from occasional unresponsiveness to swipes and gestures, it sometimes lagged for so long that it appeared as if a tap was unrecognized, resulting in accidentally double-tapping the same area and unintentionally activating another app or option.

Riptide GP ran smoothly, however, the accelerometer lacked precision and playing the game required more tilting and exaggerated movement than with the Nexus 7 tablets. The tablet is geared toward more casual gaming, and this was evident when running N.O.V.A 3. The first level was extremely sluggish to load -- it took over four minutes each time I tried-- and frame rates were consistently choppy.

Conclusion

The Asus Memo Pad HD 7 is a good, but not great, small tablet option if you're on a budget. In typical "you get what you pay for" fashion, its build looks and feels inexpensive, and its performance is mediocre at best. If you can get past that, the screen's impressive range of color and the abilities to customize and enhance your multimedia experience while maximizing your battery life make it a worthy, inexpensive buy.

Your next best option in the 7-inch tablet category, the new Nexus 7, is $80 more -- almost half again the cost of the Memo Pad HD 7-- although it is a significant upgrade. If you're limited by a budget, the tablet is a good option for casual use and multimedia viewing, but if you're not, treat yourself and go with the Nexus 7 for faster performance and a slimmer build.

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