MSI’s 7-inch Tablet Is For Geeks Who Cannot Afford Apple iPad Mini and Even Google Nexus 7

By Herman Lai, posted Jan 28, 2013 at 12:26 PM, 3,455 views,

MSI’s 7-inch Tablet Is For Geeks Who Cannot Afford Apple iPad Mini and Even Google Nexus 7

If the $199 Nexus 7 is out of your budget and looking for a cheaper 7-inch tablet, MSI has an offer that can make up your mind. The Taiwanese electronic maker named its low cost 7-inch tablet as “MSI Enjoy 71″, which is selling at around $172 US dollars in Taiwan, and it’s not available to other countries yet. The tablet features a standard 1024 x 600 pixel IPS display. Under the hood, you’ll find a dual-core 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. The best part? It has microSD card slot (supports up to 32GB) and a mini-HDMI port that allows your tablet hooks up with your television at home, and these are some features that you could never find on Nexus 7. In this article, we also have a short paragraph comparing the specs of all the best 7-inch tablet out there including Kindle Fire HD, ASUS MeMO Pad and iPad Mini after the break.

MSI has made its budget tablet ultra-portable, measures at merely 8.9mm thick and weighs 299 grams. Furthermore, it’s designed with an cool and metallic casing, unlike the plastic enclosure found on Google’s devices. Other specs include a 2MP rear camera, a front-facing VGA camera and a 3200mAh battery. The battery seems to be insufficient even the tablet just runs a dual-core processor, it can only sustain for roughly around 5-6 hours. Sadly, MSI Enjoy 71 is pre-installed with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and there’s no words on any possible upgrade to Google’s latest Android system.

Specs Comparison

It’s interesting to see, out of those five tablets, ASUS MeMo Pad and MSI Enjoy 71 are from Asia and both have a microSD card slot and 8GB of internal storage. We don’t see this happen on Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD and iPad Mini, and the minimum storage option that they offer is 16GB. Seemingly, it’s a strategy that the two Taiwanese makers utilized to help cut the production cost. Other than that, ASUS and MSI’s 7-inch tablets do not have a powerful processor. We can safely assume this is also part of their strategy to reduce cost. In terms of battery life, Kindle Fire HD is probably the best one, and the Taiwanese tablets are definitely not good enough, that’s what need to be improved. Despite, we really love the fact that MSI Enjoy 71 is so light and thin, even lighter than the iPad Mini, and this factor is really important to users who always travel around. If you have limited budget, it seems like ASUS MeMo Pad is the cheapest option that you can get.

Unboxing The MSI Enjoy 71

If you want to buy one, and you are in Taiwan right now or you have a friend living in that country, you can make a purchase via PChome’s 24h Shopping e-commerce site, which is priced at 4990 NTD (around $172 USD). It’s out of stock at the moment, seems like this tablet is favored by many Taiwanese folks.

That’s what gonna look like after you unfold the package, and you’ll see the tablet and a 16GB microSD card. The microSD card is included with the purchase. Isn’t that great?