In the contest to replace your laptop – and maybe even your TV – Android 3.0 tablets such as the Motorola Xoom are ganging up on the Apple iPad 2 by sheer quantity. We absolutely thrilled over the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, for example. Now it's time for the Acer Iconia Tab A500's day in the sun.
In many ways, this is all about the operating system, so we'll admit that the differences between the three main Android 3.0 tabs are marginal at best. You have to choose your OS poison wisely – the iPad 2 is better for music, movies and games, and it has better quality apps and more of them.
Meanwhile, the BlackBerry PlayBook is more secure than the competition, has real multi-tasking and even a more fluid interface for controlling your apps (er, all four of them).
Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets are arguably more open than either the iPad 2 or the PlayBook. The app approval process is easier, and coding is less restrictive, using Google SDK.
So what does that means for the Acer Iconia Tab A500? Primarily, the decision comes down to the design and handling of the device. The Iconia Tab A500 uses the same Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor as the Motorola Xoom, they both weigh exactly 730g and both have a 10.1-inch touchscreen. The list goes on: both devices have 32GB of internal memory, 1GB of RAM and support microSD cards up to 64GB.
Yet, the main difference is that the Acer Iconia Tab A500 feels bulkier. That can be a good thing for those who tend to abuse their gadgets mercilessly, since the Iconia Tab A500 has an aluminium back and a sturdier, stockier footprint. In a side-by-side comparison, the Motorola Xoom looks more like an iPad 2 and the Iconia Tab A500 fits in better with a recent crop of Windows 7 tablets, including the rather disappointing Acer Iconia Tab W500.
The Iconia Tab A500 not only feels bulkier, it is bulkier. The device measures 260 x 177 x 13.3mm, which is significantly wider than the Motorola Xoom, considering both devices have the same size screen.
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 also has a dedicated HDMI-out port for playing 1080p video on your HD TV, like the Motorola Xoom. What's really missing is a selection of unusually impressive extra features – the Asus Eee Pad Transformer morphs into a real notebook; the HTC Flyer has a helpful add-on interface component.
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 also has a front-facing 2MP camera and a rear facing 5MP cam. In the box, Acer includes a charger and USB cable, but no earbuds, case or stand.
The Iconia Tab A500 does provide one UI add-on for categorising apps. For example, games are separated into their own screen. It has a limited appeal, but at least there's something new on offer. One other slight differentiator: the Iconia Tab A500 includes a couple of extra apps and games beyond the norm.
At £450 for Wi-Fi only or £530 for Wi-Fi and 3G, the Acer Iconia is a hair cheaper than the Motorola Xoom but more than the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. There will, however, be a 16GB version emerging in mid-june for £380 which could be a more attractive option.
So does the Acer Iconia Tab A500 really fall in the middle? Does it rank near the top of the tabs or closer to the bottom?
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 has a less appealing, more traditional design than the Motorola Xoom, which is all-black with a power button on the back. With the Iconia Tab A500, the buttons are a bit harder to find. It's easy to forget (or get all turned around in orientation) and fumble for the power key, which is on the left. The headphone jack and HDMI port are also on the left. There's a docking port underneath as well.
On the right, there's a USB port (presumably a vestige of the W500 model) that only worked with a standard keyboard, not a mouse. You can also attach a USB keydrive into the port, but the Iconia Tab A500 only lets you access files using a file manager, not directly.
There's also a standard microUSB port and the charge port. On top, there are two volume control buttons and a screen lock switch. You'll also find a covered port for the microSD slot, which Acer says will be used for adding an LTE card at some point.
The 1280 x 800 TFT display on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 measures 10.1 inches, like the Motorola Xoom, and is bright and clear. The screen isn't a weak point but isn't a differentiator either. In a side-by-side comparison to the Apple iPad 2, with the brightness for both devices turned all the way up, the iPad 2 looked brighter and easier to view from a side angle. Compared to the Xoom, the Iconia Tab A500's screen looked remarkably similar.
Some of the hardware differentiators on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 might not be obvious at first. Like the Motorola Xoom and the Apple iPad 2, the speakers for playing movie audio and music are just average – about what you might expect on an entry-level netbook.
There's very little bass response but average clarity. Yet, Acer added a slight tweak: the Iconia Tab A500 uses Dolby Mobile technology that did seem to make the movie Fair Game sound a bit more life-like – you actually hear some shuffling feet or background audio more distinctly.
Some graphically-rich sites such as GamesRadar.com and CNN.com pulled up a hair faster on the Iconia Tab A500 than the Motorola Xoom, even over the exact same Wi-Fi connection, although oddly, the Google Earth app ran a hair faster on the Xoom.
Acer includes a content sharing system called Clear.fi that is essentially a low-cost way to build a home entertainment streaming network. That's a good thing, since the Iconia Tab A500 doesn't offer any way to purchase or rent videos from the device (Motorola just recently added this capability to the Xoom).
Clear.fi works like Windows Connect in that you can set up a media server and stream music, videos and photos to the device. In an age of Hulu, YouTube, and even apps such as HBO Go in the US, the idea of a media server seems a bit redundant – we'd prefer at least an option for streaming mainstream videos from the web directly to the device.
Acer is at least trying to up the ante with some UI customisations on the Iconia Tab A500. Overall, the Android 3.0 interface is extremely easy to use and understand – as we covered in our Android 3.0 review.
Fingers swipes and presses on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 screen registered accurately – we only had a few minor issues with the on-screen keyboard not registering a click or two.
With the Iconia Tab A500, there's no sense that Acer radically improved the basic Android 3.0 experience (like HTC did on the Flyer), but then again Honeycomb is already quite useful.
Market and apps
Another differentiator with the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is that there are a handful of bundled apps. Acer and other computer makers do the same thing with laptops – sometimes, the bundled apps are noteworthy and add value, but sometimes they add clutter. Here, the apps are valuable.
There's the full version of Let's Golf, a fun and cartoonish golfing simulator. Acer also includes a trial for the game Hero of Sparta, a hack-and-slash adventure game. We also tested Need for Speed: Shift on the Iconia Tab A500 and every one of these games ran smoothly without any choppiness.
Acer includes a very odd reader app called LumiRead, in addition to the one Google provides, called Books. LumiRead only seems to work in Germany, and there was no way to access the store.
For multimedia apps, Acer includes a photo browsing tool, a media player called NemoPlayer, another music player and one for playing internet radio stations. These apps wouldn't jump into the rankings in the Apple Store but here, on a device with precious-view third-party apps available for tablets, they add value.
One of the stand-out apps is called SocialJogger. This tool links you into your Facebook and Twitter accounts to view photos, post a status update and check your profile. You can also see an aggregated listing of links other people have shared through their profiles.
The Android Market has improved since we first tested the Motorola Xoom. We recently found another batch of good, download-worthy apps including Google Earth, FlightTrack and a few new games. See TechRadar's Top 30 best Android 3.0 apps article for more great apps.
Of course, you can also install any of the Android smartphone apps, which run in a smaller screen.
That said, there are still not enough Android 3.0 apps to challenge Apple. There are roughly 50-60 apps that make use of the larger screen real estate on the Acer Iconia Tab A500. Still, the Android Market does make it easy to search for apps, download and install them. You can also search for apps and install them directly to the device using your computer by going to the Android Market online.
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 uses a fairly typical 10.1-inch touchscreen that looks bright and clear. The initial reaction to the screen might not be "wow, that's amazingly bright". However, it mostly functions as you'd expect and doesn't lessen or improve the Android 3.0 experience compared to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer or Motorola Xoom.
Also like the Xoom, the Iconia Tab A500 screen tends to get grime-covered after several hours of usage. The iPad 2 uses a similar grime-reducing coating as the iPhone 4 and tends to look less smudged. It's not such a serious problem on the Iconia Tab A500 that the device becomes unusable, however.
We were unable to test it in time, but there's a dock available for the Acer Iconia Tab A500, which costs £60. The dock charges the Acer Iconia Tab A500 and has an external 3.5mm port for connecting speakers. There's also a remote for advancing through music tracks or to the next scene in a movie. As an add-on, the docking station is a good way to view videos or photo galleries on the screen while the tablet charges.
Another important note about the Iconia Tab A500 screen is that it tends to represent colours a hair better than the Motorola Xoom. In several tests with the built-in camera, shots looked more accurate to the physical object. For example, the dark burgundy of a photo frame looked more realistic on the Acer Iconia Tab A500.
The BlackBerry PlayBook revealed some shortcomings on Android 3.0 devices, namely that you can use the side bezel on that tablet to control parts of the interface. Until Apple leads the industry again with a full side-to-side display (presumably on the iPhone 5), the bezel on most tablets is just there for looks. On the Acer Iconia Tab A500 it's slightly wider, but that makes the device a bit easier to grasp.
One other gripe: in some lighting conditions, the Iconia Tab A500 shows a slight dot pattern on the screen. This wasn't an issue in everyday use, though, and might only be noticeable in bright sunlight.
Speaking of sunny days, the Iconia Tab A500 also has a surprisingly glare-prone screen. In one test with the built-in rear-facing camera, the glare was so harsh we couldn't even see the screen to take a photo.
Overall usability on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is good, but not as high as competing devices. Part of the problem is button placement – the Motorola Xoom power button on the back, as we mentioned, is a bit odd to use at first but it's easy to find, even in a dark room.
The iPad 2 buttons are arranged in a way that, if you're holding the device the wrong way, you can still figure out how to find them. But on the Iconia Tab A500, the buttons are sometimes hard to find and, if you're holding the device upside-down, can cause confusion.
Another issue with the Iconia Tab A500 is that it feels bulky. Some users might find that appealing – a little heft means you'll be less likely to drop the device. If you do, it might withstand the drop. Yet, both the Apple iPad 2 and Motorola Xoom felt svelter in the hand and more portable. This is all perception: the Xoom and Iconia Tab A500 weigh exactly the same, with the same screen size, but the Iconia Tab A500 has a wider footprint.
One highlight in using the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is the browser. Like the Xoom, sites pull up quickly and run in Adobe Flash 10.1 without any problems. Most sites work correctly, but Hulu, for some reason, still sees Android 3.0 tablets as smartphones so blocks access and shows an error message.
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 has a few other minor issues. One is that the power cable is abnormally short, so you won't be able to charge it on a desk unless there's an outlet within arm's reach.
Battery life on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is just average for an Android device – about seven hours in our typical everyday-usage test. Some reports indicate a battery life that's longer – up to nine hours – and much shorter – only six hours. The issue is that the battery life depends greatly on how you consume media.
If you play movies and listen to music, you can expect a six hour usage time. If you turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, connecting only as needed, use mostly light apps for note-taking and business work, then you can expect a nine hour battery life or even more. What we found is that the Iconia Tab A500 doesn't last as long as the Motorola Xoom or the Apple iPad 2 in everyday usage, and we ended up being annoyed at having to re-charge at midday.
The screen clarity on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 makes it a good choice for media, and the fact that this model came out well after the Motorola Xoom means that Acer benefits from a slightly more mature Android 3.0.1 operating system. Still, like the Xoom, movie playback is a bit laggy at times. When testing the film Fair Game, playback chugged along slightly during scenes shot over a skyline.
For music playback, there's a new player in town. The Music app now supports Google Music, and while some have called the cloud portal yet another Napster clone, it's perfectly suited to Android 3.0. Once you load all of your music on the service from the desktop, you can then play songs without having to download them on any Android device. (Google: give us local download from the site.)
Photo playback on the Iconia Tab A500 looks clear, and pictures flowed smoothly in slideshow mode, both from the gallery app and when using the built-in browser and viewing a Picasa photo album.
One of the most important things against the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is that there's no way to rent or purchase videos. When we reviewed the Motorola Xoom, we had the same fault, although some noted that you can consume media fairly easily through the browser. The problem is that, if you salivate over the latest blockbuster release every Tuesday, you're more interested in rentals that are reliable (and cheap).
The Motorola Xoom recently added a new service for renting movies, and the Samsung tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1V provide a similar feature. We expect Acer to follow suit as well, but for now you have to load your own on the Iconia Tab A500.
The Clear.Fi service we mentioned does help you set up a streaming network, but that doesn't help in those situations where you're unplugged from everything and riding on a bus somewhere.
The 5MP camera on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is serviceable enough. It's easy to use and snaps clear photos. One gripe is that there's a delay between when you focus on a subject and when the photo actually snaps – the focus only works when you release the shutter. This isn't quite as annoying as the BlackBerry PlayBook, which makes a chime only after the photo snaps.
See full-res sample
The camera app provides the typical features for Android 3.0 – you can use a polarise setting and make all photos look black and white.
See full-res sample
One unique offering on the Iconia Tab A500 is that you can set a time-lapse for the video cam setting which makes your movies look like they're deliberately stuttering. In our tests, these videos didn't really work right and just had excessive stuttering during playback. They're supposed to look like stop-motion films where the camera snaps a photo at regular intervals.
See full-res sample
For video quality, you can select up to 720p as the highest level. There's also a low quality setting for smaller files and a YouTube formatted video option. In 720p, videos looked clear but lacked a colour depth we'd expect for HD videos. Also, on one test machine – a Lenovo ThinkCentre M – the videos played with some stuttering. Once formatted for the Web on Picasa, they looked smooth.
Acer plans to update the Iconia Tab A500 this year so that you can record and play 1080p videos.
The Iconia Tab A500's front-facing camera, at 2MP, is less usable on this tablet, since there's no built-in video conferencing app like the iPad 2's FaceTime. Instead, the only app we found that even supports video chats is Adobe Connect Mobile, but the app didn't recognise the video camera on the Iconia Tab A500, which was also a problem on the BlackBerry PlayBook.
Acer Iconia Tab A500 benchmarked
How it rates against the rest - higher is better
How we test
TechRadar aims to produce the most helpful tablet reviews on the web, so that you are able to make a more informed buying decision.
Part of this testing process includes benchmarking. It's a good way of measuring the overall performance of a product's internal hardware components.
We use Antutu System Benchmark to test tablets. It's a comprehensive Android benchmarking app and produces consistent results.
Antutu measures an Android device's CPU performance, 2D and 3D graphics performance, memory speed and internal and external storage read/write speeds. It combines the results for each test and gives the device a final score.
We test each device three times and take an average.
In the end, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 fits in the middle of the pack. We weren't that impressed with the HTC Flyer, mostly because of its high cost and the fact that it doesn't use Android 3.0, so that some apps don't format correctly for the bigger screen. The BlackBerry PlayBook has a serious app problem.
Yet, given the hard choice between the Motorola Xoom and the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the Xoom gets the slight edge. One reason is that we prefer the sleeker design. There's no reason for the Iconia Tab A500 to be so much wider, although some users will prefer the more rugged design.
App selection on the Apple iPad 2 is far more advanced, and the Apple tablet gets the edge in terms of multimedia playback (especially on-device movie rentals), games and video chats. The PlayBook is the oddball challenger, and we trust the HP TouchPad will also enter the mix with an alternative OS that gives Google something to think about.
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 doesn't improve Android 3.0, and the categorisation system that places apps in buckets isn't that novel. We also have to mention battery life – the Iconia Tab A500 just didn't last as long as the Xoom or the iPad 2 in our tests, especially for movie playback.
We liked
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 gets some extra credit for its more rugged design. The aluminium back can take a bit more abuse than the plastic used on other tablets. There's more heft to the device and it has a wider footprint so you can get a good grip on the tablet – we could see a restaurant that wants to use a tablet for customer orders choosing the Iconia Tab A500 over the Xoom because it's wider and more rugged.
Operationally, the Iconia Tab A500 only had one or two minor bugs and a few touchscreen issues, but these same problems also arise on the iPad 2. They don't dramatically alter daily usage.
We disliked
The bulky design is an acquired taste on the Acer Iconia Tab A500. It's not for everyone – the tablet has a faint reminder of the Windows Tablet PC days, and that's not a good thing. In daily use, when we had the Motorola Xoom and the Acer Iconia Tab A500 sitting side by side, we found that we reached for the Xoom more often just because we perceived it as being more portable, even though both tablets weigh the same.
The Iconia Tab A500 had a few minor bugs with some apps, including Google Maps and Gmail. A hard reboot of the device solved most of the minor bugs, though.
We also weren't able to use the Iconia Tab A500 with an Apple MacBook.
Other issues seem more like minor annoyances: the short charger cable, the faint pixel grid on the screen, the shorter than expected battery life. None of these are major issues alone, but they add up to a less than perfect experience compared to another tablet, the Motorola Xoom, that has about the same specs.
Verdict
The Acer Iconia Tab A500 ultimately beat the BlackBerry PlayBook, which still has an app problem and is smaller for viewing videos and pictures. The Motorola Xoom is a hair better because of its trendier design.
Overall, the Iconia Tab A500 is a very good tablet that falls out of the running quickly compared to the Apple iPad 2 with its boatload of apps, video chatting, games and superior media handling.
Review sample kindly provided by Saveonlaptops.co.uk
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