ASUS ZenPad C 7.0: A 3G dual-SIM 7-inch tablet for just S$199?!
With a 7-inch display, a reasonably slim and light build, dual-SIM 3G connectivity, and an unheard of price tag of S$199, the ASUS ZenPad C 7.0 looks like a great buy for anyone after an affordable and compact tablet for web browsing on the go. But is it any good? We find out.
Overview
Over the past year, ASUS has been busy beefing up its tablet and phablet offerings with the likes of the VivoTab Note 8 and the Fonepad 7. The latest addition to ASUS' tablet lineup is the entry-level ZenPad C 7.0.
With a slim and portable design and dual micro-SIM card slots with 3G connectivity, the ZenPad C 7.0 is one of the most affordable tablets around with an unheard-of price tag of S$199. Its closest competitor is probably the Xiaomi Mi Pad, which is Wi-Fi only, and costs S$100 more at S$299.
But price alone is not a good indicator of value, and it remains to be seen if the ZenPad C 7.0 brings a compelling package to the table. So join us as we put the ZenPad C 7.0 through its paces and find out if it is truly a good buy for those looking for an affordable tablet.
Design
With its 7-inch display, the ZenPad C 7.0 is noticeably smaller than most other mini tablets, as other manufacturers have generally abandoned that display size in favor of 8-inch displays. On the plus side, this does make it more portable than its competitors.
The ZenPad C 7.0 is one of the last remaining new 7-inch tablet offerings in the market.
Despite its low price, the ZenPad C 7.0 feels well-made, and actually looks pretty good too. At 8.4mm thin the tablet isn't super slim, but it's not a brick either. It's also quite light at 265g. The edges of the tablet are slightly raised above the screen, and the back of the tablet has a textured white finish, with a sort of faux leather pattern, which results in a nice, secure grip.
The raised, textured rear surface makes it easier to hold on to the ZenPad C 7.0.
The speaker and the webcam sit on the front of the tablet, at the top bezel, with the 3.5mm headphone jack located on the top edge. Unfortunately, the positioning of the speaker means that using the tablet in landscape mode, for example when watching videos, results in audio only coming from one side.
The speaker sits on the front of the tablet, at the top when held in portrait orientation.
The power button and volume rocker sit on the right edge of the tablet, while the Micro-USB port is located at the bottom. Flipping the tablet over, there's a 2-megapixel camera at the top left corner and a plastic flap at the bottom left corner, which hides a MicroSD slot and two SIM card slots - both of which have 3G connectivity. And yes, you can make voice calls with the tablet too. Unfortunately, the flap is very thin and a bit fiddly and feels like it might snap off.
The flap covering the two SIM card slots and single SD Card slot is quite flimsy.
Display and Audio
The bad news is that the ZenPad C 7.0 has a rather low screen resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels (170ppi). While this makes it roughly the same as the Samsung Galaxy Tab A's 1,024 x 768 pixels resolution (160ppi as the screen is larger), it is noticeably worse than the Xiaomi Mi Pad, which has a 2,048 x 1,536 pixels resolution display (326 ppi).
Surfing the web and watching videos on the tablet also reveals that the tablet's maximum brightness leaves much to be desired. Colors also look a bit washed out compared to both the Mi Pad and Tab A, lacking vibrancy and contrast.
The ZenPad C 7.0's display (top) appears less bright and colors are more muted compared to the Xiaomi Mi Pad (middle) and Samsung Galaxy Tab A (bottom).
On paper, audio on the the ZenPad C 7.0 looks pretty good thanks to built-in DTS-HD Premium Sound and SonicMaster technology. Unfortunately, the reality isn't as good, and audio quality is lacking overall, being both sharp and tinny at higher volumes. Volume-wise it's also a bit on the soft side.
User Interface
The ZenPad C 7.0 runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop with ASUS' ZenUI skin on top of it. It's not that different from vanilla Android, so you shouldn't have any trouble using the ZenPad C 7.0.
One problem you'll encounter with this tablet is that, with only 8GB internal storage, the OS and ASUS' custom apps take up about half the available storage space. Fortunately there's a microSD card slot, but it only supports cards up to 64GB in capacity.
You get about 4GB worth of storage right out of the box.
The tablet does come with some useful apps such as PC Link, which mirrors the tablet's display on a PC through either Wi-FI or USB. There's also the Auto-start manager which lets you choose which apps run in the background when starting up the tablet, which can help extend your battery life. If you're interested in an extensive overview of ZenUI, click here.
The Auto-start Manager lets you control which apps run in the background when the tablet boots up.
Benchmark Performance
The ASUS ZenPad C 7.0 is powered by Intel's 64-bit quad-core Atom x3-C3200 SoFIA processor, which incidentally was designed and manufactured in Singapore. It has 1GB RAM.
With its 7-inch display and super low price, the ZenPad C 7.0 doesn't actually have any direct competitors, but we'll be comparing it to the Xiaomi Mi Pad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8.0 (Wi-Fi) as these two tablets are the closest to it in terms of price.
Sunspider JavaScript
SunSpider JavaScript helps measure the browsing performance of a device when processing JavaScript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. The ZenPad C 7.0 didn't fare that well here, but in actual usage, web browsing wasn't an issue and we didn't experience any significant lag.
Quadrant
Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. We were unable to get a score for the Xiaomi Mi Pad as we kept encountering an error during testing. In this test, it was no surprise that the Tab A pulled ahead of the ZenPad C 7.0 as we experienced lag when switching between screens and launching apps during day-to-day usage of the ZenPad C 7.0. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's definitely something that should be taken into consideration.
3DMark 2013
3DMark 2013 is a multi-platform benchmark based on the OpenGL ES 2.0 API and is designed for smartphones, mobile devices and ARM architecture compute devices. It includes two graphics tests designed to stress the GPU performance of your device and a physics test to stress its CPU performance.
3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited uses off-screen rendering resolution at 1080p, higher quality textures and post-processing effects to create a more demanding load for the latest smartphones and tablets. It also disables vertical sync, display resolution scaling and other operating system factors that can affect the result, thus making it ideal for chip-to-chip comparisons of different chipsets.
Surprisingly, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A and the ASUS ZenPad C 7.0 were really close in this test, but as expected for a gaming benchmark, the Xiaomi Mi Pad's NVIDIA GeForce Kepler GPU pulled way ahead.
Imaging Performance
The rear camera on the ZenPad C 7.0 is only 2-megapixels, so while it does come with additional shooting modes and features such as HDR, Selfie, and Panorama to name a few, you shouldn't really get your hopes up.
You can click on the image for the full resolution version, but it's good to manage expectations.
Battery Life
Our standard battery test for tablets includes the following parameters:
- Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
- Constant data streaming through email and Twitter
We did not manage to test the battery life on the Xiaomi Mi Pad and Samsung Galaxy Tab A, but the ZenPad C 7.0's 3,450 mAh capacity battery managed to last 330 minutes, or five and a half hours. With its low resolution screen and somewhat low-end hardware, we were expecting it to last a bit longer.
Conclusion
While it seems that the ASUS ZenPad C 7.0 doesn't really excel in our benchmark tests, it's unfair to judge it solely on how well it performs in these tests. After all, it is probably one of the most, if not the most affordable tablet you can get your hands on right now. Even its closest competitor, the Xiaomi Mi Pad, costs S$100 more. And, despite the ZenPad C 7.0's low asking price, build quality is still decent, and you get dual-SIM 3G connectivity too.
That being said, the ZenPad C 7.0's performance makes it only really suitable for those with basic usage requirements. Its compact footprint and 3G connectivity make it ideal for anyone on a budget who wants web browsing on the go, but it is not good for much more than that, and its display also isn't the best for watching movies or TV shows. Battery life could also be better.
All things considered, if you're after a cheap and portable tablet with 3G connectivity, the ZenPad C 7.0 is a great choice, and at S$199 you really can't go wrong. But if you have a more diverse usage pattern, and you can live with Wi-Fi only connectivity, the Xiaomi Mi Pad's larger screen, superior display and processor is worth paying an extra S$100 for.
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