ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 Specs: What you should know

The ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 is an Android tablet with upper middle class specs in a high end body. It comes with a full metal design, a nice 7.9-inch display and recent Android 7.1 Nougat software. Basically it is the littler brother of last years ZenPad 3S 10. Let‘s take a closer look at this interesting iPad Mini alternative.

ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 Highlights

• Full metal body – feels very high end
• It‘s shipping with Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box
• The Snapdragon 652 is a good performer and power efficient
• You can get it with LTE if you want

ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 Design

The design of the ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 is pretty nice. We‘re getting a full metal body here. Thanks to the aluminum it feels like you‘re holding an expensive tablet. On the upper back there is a plastic strip for the antennas though. While it is not the thinnest tablet out there, it is quite thin at 6.9 millimeters.

Unlike the ZenPad 3S 10, ASUS is not giving us a fingerprint reader. The home-button on the front is only that. A home-button. That‘s kind of sad. Anyways, there‘s a decent 13-megapixel camera on the back. The front camera has a resolution of 5-megapixel. On the sides are a USB type C port, a microSD card slot, the volume controls, and the power button.

Display and Hardware

As I mentioned in the beginning, the ZenPad 3S 8.0 has a 7.9-inch display. That means the aspect ratio is 4:3. The resolution is very high at 2048 x 1536. So we‘re getting a very high pixel density on that small screen. I had the chance to check it out at Computex 2017 and it did look very nice.

ASUS is shipping the tablet with good upper middle class hardware. Inside runs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 together with 3GB or 4GB of RAM. The internal storage has a capacity of 32GB or 64GB. Depending on the market the specs might differ a bit.

Other features include WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. As I said, you can get it with optional LTE 4G as well.

Full Specifications

Tablet	ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0
Operating System	Android 7.1 Nougat
Display	7.9-inch IPS with 2048 x 1536
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 652
Storage	32GB or 64GB
Expandable	microSD
RAM	3GB or 4GB
Rear Camera	13MP
Front Camera	5MP
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.2
Charging	USB Type C
Battery	22Wh
Security	no fingerprint sensor
Dimensions	unknown
Weight	unknown

Android 7.1 Nougat and ZenUI

If you‘ve had a tablet from ASUS in the past, you‘ll feel right at home. It is shipping with Android 7.1 Nougat which is a very recent version. But on top of it runs the so called ZenUI. That‘s the own interface from the Taiwanese brand. It customizes Android quite heavily but it looks nice. You can customize it yourself as well.

As usual, ASUS did preinstall a couple of apps. You‘re getting the SuperNotes apps, for example, as well as a weather app, some cloud apps and so on.

The device I played with at Computex 2017 was a preproduction model. Unfortunately the software was a bit sluggish. I really hope that won‘t be the case with the final version.

ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 Reviews

Since the ASUS ZenPad 3S 8.0 is not out yet, you won‘t find any real reviews online. They did show it at a trade show already. So you‘ll be able to find a couple of hands on videos, first looks and quick reviews. Get your first impressions here: