One of the first Android tablets of many to launch, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is a 7-inch tablet that sports Android’s Honeycomb operating system. Acer has been dominant in the netbook scene and has seen its market share in the laptop division increase, so it’s only natural that their attention would turn to the new emerging world of tablets, compelling many tablet fans to find out where to buy the Acer Iconia Tab A100.
Design and Features
Measuring 195 x 117 x 13.1mm the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is small enough to fit in a large jacket pocket or purse. It weighs a mere 450 grams which should allow one hand usage.
Overall the design is minimalistic yet very distinctive from that of the iPad. It is clear that while this can be an iPad competitor, Acer has done enough to differentiate itself from Steve Jobs and his horde of iLawyers who are lawsuit happy.
The 7.0-inch LCD capacitive screen comes with 600 x 1024 pixels with a density of 170ppi. Multitouch is supported.
While not chart shattering, the internals read very nicely with an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz chip running the show along with ULP GeForce for graphics. 512MB of RAM is standard and storage sizes are limited to 8GB or 16GB variants. That said, a card slot supports microSD and microSDHC cards of up to 32GB.
Connectivity and sensor features include WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, microUSB 2.0, accelerometer, gyroscope and compass.
Rounding up the feature list is a 5 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash, geo-tagging and image stabilization with video recording of 720@30fps and vga@60fps. The front facing camera is a 2 megapixel shooter. Last but not last, we have a 1530mAh battery, Android 2.3 Honeycomb and HDMI port. This tablet is certainly stacked when it comes to well endowed feature sets, driving many consumers to learn where to purchase the Acer Iconia Tab A100 device.
Performance
One thing we like about the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is its size. It’s small enough to fit in one hand and is a lot more portable than the iPad or Galaxy Tab. Though it has a 7-inch screen, it still packs a powerful dual-core processor from NVIDIA that not only gives it stellar multitasking and web browsing performance, but the ULP graphics add that extra oomph for gaming and other graphically intensive tasks.
The rear facing camera is a disappointment unfortunately. While the photos are decent, they are subpar compared to ones we captured from a Galaxy S smartphone. The front facing camera performs perfectly for video conferencing but you’d be better suited with leaving self-portraits to a different camera.
The battery life is decent, nothing to boast about here, but we got 7 hours on a standard battery run down test. For a 7-inch tablet, this is good though we could have asked for an extra hour.
Our only major issue with the tablet is its limited RAM which is half of what you find on tablets from the competition. As mentioned before, the camera is not up to par but if we are truthful, we haven’t seen a tablet that has put an acceptable camera within its body.
Android 3.2 is here and so far there is nothing very different from the stock experience. Acer has included a few minor UI tweaks but nothing major enough to look completely different. Overall the software is stable and as this is version 3.2, a lot of the major bugs form version 3.0 has been ironed out. That said, we did feel that while very promising, Android 3.2 is not as polished as iOS. Granted, that is where the entire Android ecosystem was a few years back, but things have changed and we have no doubt that the same will apply with future updates.
Conclusion
After using the Iconia Tab A100 we came to the conclusion that while this is a great tablet it has limited appeal. The screen size is the only factor here. Thankfully Acer has a 10.1-inch older brother for those who want something a little bigger.
Overall however, the Iconia Tab A100 is a great tablet and perfect for the basic functions such as web browsing, video watching and email checking. We’ll just have to see how many apps will be compatible with the screen size as that is ultimately left up to developers and not OEM’s. You’ll find additional information on the option to buy an Acer Iconia Tab A100.