It is almost certain that Apple’s next tablet offering will not feature a display which has a diagonal any smaller than the iPad 2 (9.7 inches), so we can’t really talk about the iPad 3 and MeMO ME370T in the same light, but the fact that ASUS has announced such a powerhouse for half the price of the iPad 2 makes us wonder if Apple’s pricing strategy could need refining. Let’s face it back in 2010 when the first-gen iPad was released the tablet market wasn’t competitive, therefore Apple could set a marker for the rest of the competitors to follow, but now that people know that the MeMO ME370T is so cheap and very powerful we can see a lot of people thinking that $499 (starting price) is too much for a tablet in 2012.

The pricing is one thing Apple has to seriously consider, but what about processor speed? Well what’s certain is that consumers will want an improvement over the iPad 2, this boasts the Apple A5 processor which has two 1GHz cores – will people settle for a faster dual-core processor even though there is a $250 alternative out there which has a quad-core Tegra 3 chip? We doubt it. It’s almost certain that the iPad 3 will boast a currently unannounced Apple A6 SoC, we think this needs to be quad-core or better to stay competitive, otherwise we won’t see a quad-core iPad arrive until at least 2013.

Obviously there’s a lot more to a tablet than pricing and processor speed, in fact we shouldn’t even compare any iOS tablet to Android offerings as different software platforms run far better on certain hardware than others (Windows Phone 7 is one example of this), but with that said Apple like to wow audiences with its product reveals so the pressure is certainly on as no-matter what anyone says there were a lot of disappointed faces when Apple revealed the iPhone 4S.

What do you expect from the iPad 3 in terms of pricing and hardware?

Somehow we havn’t yet spoken about the MeMO ME370T in detail, therefore this article has been put together to give you a good overview of everything we know about this tablet so far and why it is causing such a stir.

Let’s start with tech specs, sadly the MeMO ME370T has not yet shown up on the ASUS website and some sources are suggesting that it features a dual-core 1.2Ghz Qualcomm processor, but more reputable sources have confirmed that it does in fact boast a quad-core Tegra 3 chip, 1GB of RAM, at least 16GB of storage, an 8 megapixel camera on the rear, a microUSB port, a microSD card reader, micro HDMI-out and a 7-inch IPS display which outputs at 1280 x 800. Perhaps the biggest negative is that there’s no front-facing camera.

As you can see in terms of specs the MeMO ME370T is pretty impressive, but when we tell you that it will retail for just $250 you will understand just why CNET consider this the best tablet of CES 2012, especially given the fact that it will run Ice Cream Sandwich out-of-the-box.

The low price will undoubtedly attract a lot of attention, but if you thought that corners have been cut in the manufacturing process to keep the price low think again, it weighs just 0.88 pounds and looks fantastic (check out Engadget’s photo gallery for proof). Sure it may not look as beautiful as the iPad 2 and the bezel is a little thick, but we can accept that and instead concentrate on amazing performance offered by such an affordable tablet.

Below we have embedded a video which gives you a quick overview of what to expect from the ME370T, the form-factor may take a little of getting used to but we think it’s destined for great things in 2012.

We are told that this tablet will arrive in Q2 2012, will you buy it?