Acer Iconia Tab A500 review

Acer Iconia Tab A500 look back

The $450 Iconia A500 costs less than the iPad and the Android contest, simply are the sacrifices worth it?

Past Apr 27, 2011, 4:23pm EDT

Whether it likes it or not, Acer's got a reputation in the consumer electronics business: its computers are seldom the most well made, but they're always the most affordable on shelves. Information technology's exactly what launched Acer to turn a top computer manufacturer a a few years ago and what made the company and then successful in the netbook securities industry. The 10.1-edge Iconia Tab A500 is Acer's prime attempt at applying that thinking to tablets, and Eastern Samoa the bulk of Honeycomb tablets price north of $550 and are being oversubscribed with pricey 3G plans, the $450, WiF-only tablet comes at an absolutely perfect time. The A500's specs match the rest of the Honeycomb tablets – it's got a treble-core Tegra 2 processor, 16GB of entrepot, dual-cameras, and a 1280x800-resolution display – but for $150 less than the others, does it suffer from Acer's typical sacrifices in screen and manufacturing prize? Can the Nationalist China keep company succeed at attractive on Motorola's Xoom and LG's G-Slate not only in price but in actual usability and features? Hit the break to find unstylish fully review.

Hardware / design

I've really been pleasantly popeyed at how sturdy the hardware seems

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We've been hearing lots of talk of shoot down-shaped hardware lately, and coincidentally, the Iconia Tab key A500 follows a quasi design philosophy. When held in landscape painting mode, the right and leftover edges funnel inward, and while the aesthetic choice may look minor, it really made information technology easier to hold than the Xoom's boxy, chiseled back. In that location's also another Major design component Acer's got Motorola beat connected – dissimilar the Xoom's power clit, which is located on the seat, the Iconia's glowing on / off marrow lives on the left edge. Again, it may seem alike a small detail, but it makes a world of difference when you want to wake up a tablet in real time and scram online. My only complaint virtually that button is that it and the plastic march IT lives happening feels a fleck cheap in comparison to the rest of the slab, nonetheless, those are really the only parts of the tablet that feel a tur cheap. The silver, brushed Al, which covers the plunk for and flows onto the battlefront, doesn't single look classy but gives the full product a courteous rigidity. As I intimated in the introduction, I was a bite worried about the overall quality of the twist, but I've really been enjoyably surprised at how sturdy the computer hardware seems. (Note: I still haven't gotten the ASUS Transformer to review articl so I'm not making unmediated comparisons to that product here.)

It's a fierce tablet size of it state of war out there, and while the Iconia Tab A500 stacks up kind of well against its Honeycomb rivals, the iPad 2 wins away quite a a bit connected both thickness and weight. The handy chart below has everything you indigence to know, and though the .52-inch / 1.6-inch Iconia is slightly heavier than the Xoom, I wouldn't put much weight on those numbers -- at issue it just feels flatboat and slimmer. Of course, neither of these 10-inch Humanoid tablets are atomic number 3 easy to hold equally the 9.7-inch iPad 2 – for that, we must wait on Samsung's .33-inch Galaxy Yellow journalism 10.1.

The Iconia does beat the build on embrasure option

The Iconia does trounce the rest on port selection; its left hand edge is home to a 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini-HDMI porthole, while the suitable side holds full-sized USB and Little USB ports. Under the port cover on the top you'll find a MicroSD card slot, taped-over SIM card slot, a rather stiff book rocker, and a rotary motion lock switch. The USB 2.0 port is foregone conclusion a bragging right for the Iconia, but information technology real shouldn't be at the second – I couldn't get it to read an extraneous indulgent drive or transfer files from my laptop. I finally got it to recognize a USB fanfare parkway only only in the Gallery application.

Screen / speakers

Screen and speakers

The screen is actually quite a healthy organ for the price

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Obviously, the heart of the Tablet A500 is its 10.1-inch 1280x800-resolution display, and swell, it's actually quite an a healthy organ for the Mary Leontyne Pric. The screen is extremely bright and crisp – just as bright American Samoa the Xoom, though non a bright Eastern Samoa the iPad – and piece it's not an IPS panel, both crosswise and vertical viewing angles were much adequate. At some angles the show did look a bit washed out, but looking at it dead-connected operating room with it slightly leaning spell lying down was never an issue. Like the residue of the tablets taboo on that point, the glossy riddle picks up mountain of fingerprints streaks (seriously, it's a lensman's nightmare), although to Acer's credit, a handy "Notebook computer Cleaning Fabric" comes in the box. The touchscreen itself was responsive, though the haptic feedback was so weak that I actually disabled it.

The Iconia's two biaural speakers are placed on the bottom left and right corners of the back of the device, which makes blocking them when you're material possession the pad in landscape mode way too comfortable. Hush up, the speakers, which are matched with Dolby's Audio package, provided some surprisingly squeamish playback. The standard settings – with Ray M. Dolby powered off – created for incredibly cheesy sound, but after futzing with the Dolby settings, Kanye's "Dark Fantasy" sounded shockingly full. The ii speakers are a notch above the Xoom's in volume and quality, but they're not every bit loud atomic number 3 the ones on the iPad 2 or the Playbook – Josh has actually been pretty smitten with the last mentioned.

Cameras

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The speaker arrangement isn't exactly ideal, just it's nowhere near as big as where Genus Acer injected the 5 megapixel photographic camera. The raise shooter is located in the superlative left-handed corner, and without break dow I blocked the lens system with my left index finger every meter I went to take a guesswork. When I wasn't taking pictures of my finger, the camera snapped incredibly mediocre shots. The auto-focus was relatively slow, colours were muted, and the images just look granulose. Flat unconscious, they were just not as crisp as the shots I've taken with my iPad 2 or Samsung Galaxy Tab, even when viewed on my laptop computer. Capturing 720p video on the tablet wasn't a good deal better – interior and outdoor footage just doesn't look all that high definition. I also noticed IT having a whispered time adjusting the ovalbumin balance so some of the footage I shot has a yellowish tint to it. Likewise, as Kid has said a few times now, there's actually zero natural way of holding up a 10.1-inch viewfinder when you're walking approximately. IT's just difficult.

The front-facing 2 megapixel camera is comparable most of the others I've seen on other Honeycomb tablets. When I called a friend through Google TV Chat she could tell I wasn't wearing any makeup – good news for the camera, bad news for me. Seriously though, the lens is finely for attractive self-portraits and making video calls.

Without fail I closed the lens with my left index finger every time I went to lease a shot

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Software

Genus Acer doesn't promise an untouched Humanoid 3.0 feel ilk the G-Ticket or the Xoom, merely the only echt additions the company's made is in third-party applications. To live sincere, the apps themselves aren't all that useful as Honeycomb provides nearly of the indistinguishable raw media functionality, but here's a breakable look at a few of them.

Photo browser 3d

This is probably one of the virtually interesting apps. Acer places your photos in a spiral notebook computer-like interface and allows you to use the accelerometer to crook the pages by tilting the tablet from side to side. I have no more idea wherefore you'd want to serve this, but it's fun for a arcminute or two.

Socialjogger

You can log into your Facebook and Twitter accounts here and then use the ramble on wheel on the left side of the display to scroll through your feeds. It's pretty neat, but it's lacking what it takes to make up a real Twitter replacement -- you bum't upload pictures or retweet.

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LumiRead

This is an additional reading app, but it doesn't put up anything over Google's Books. Also, you can't download books from the LumiRead store in the United States at the moment.

Clear.Fi

This is genuinely Acer's DNLA application. I didn't have any luck accessing my phone's media, but when used equally a basic multimedia viewer the app is really pretty decent.

As for Honeycomb itself, I defer to Josh's late reviews on the operating system. In short, I perfectly love the multitasking ability, the widgets, and the Gmail experience, merely the one thing holding Pine Tree State cover from replacing my iPad with a Honeycomb pill is the deficiency of third-company package. As I've complained about, in that respect isn't a Chirrup client that's optimized thus far for the bigger display and there are still entirely close to 60 apps available for the software. IT's also nearly impossible to distinguish between lozenge and phone apps in the Market at the moment.

Performance / stamp battery life

Performance and battery life

Battery animation has been a mixed bag with this tablet

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The Iconia Tab A500 is battery-powered aside a dual-nucleus 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of DDR3 RAM, and packs 16GB of storage. The carrying into action is akin to what I've seen on other Honeycomb tablets -- there's a slight yet noticeable lag when there are a number of applications open, but overall it is able to keep up. To its credit, I haven't encountered any force closes OR application crashes on the Iconia in the past workweek – my Xoom's browser will periodically go down. Both 720p and 1080p videos played back swimmingly on the tablet -- I didn't test the HDMI out capability, simply it will exclusive output 720p video for the moment. The 1080p support will be an update.

Astonishingly, battery lifespan has been a mixed base with this tablet. In my real life use – surfing the net, meter reading emails, observance close to YouTube clips – I have gotten close to 7.5 hours of intermittent use. However, on my video rundown test, which loops the one standard definition picture with light set to 65 percent and WiFi on, the ii 3260mAH batteries lasted six hours and 32 minutes. That's non quite American Samoa long As Acer's promised eight hours of HD picture play or the otherwise tablets we've tested – the Xoom lasted over eight hours and the iPad finisher to ten and a uncomplete. Along the effulgent side, the tablet didn't learn that long to agitate, but beware -- the three hoof it power cord is insanely short.

To be honest, the Iconia Tab A500 exceeded my expectations. After years of reviewing Acer laptops with crappy LCDs and cheap shaping parts, I expected the company to takings a similar itinerary with its tablets, but instead, I was affected with the manufacturing character (at least for the price), the gleaming and sharp display, and preferably-unaffected software program receive. Sure, the cameras aren't great and it trails new tablets in battery life, but for $450 those things seem forgivable, especially when you deliberate the LG G-Ticket's surgery the Xoom's respective $630 and $600 price tags. Of course, the real question is, does information technology make sense to deal an extra $50 to snag the iPad 2? At this point, that $50 makes a lade of difference in serviceableness since the Honeycomb app ecosystem is lul miles behind iOS and Apple's lozenge is untold thinner and flatboat, merely look, if you have your heart put back on a Google-powered tablet, the Iconia blends quality and affordability, which is something I haven't been fit to say active an Acer product for a years.