Acer Iconia Tab A510

Acer Iconia Tab A510 Acer's new Android tablet, the Iconia Tab A510 ($449.99 list), doesn't give you quite enough for your money.dell inspiron 1545 dvd drive The tablet market is insanely competitive: You have to deliver on style, price, or apps to succeed. While the A510 (Best Deal: $449.99 at Best Buy?) is a decent Android 4.0 tablet with the latest quad-core processor, it's beaten by its competitors in nearly every hp pavilion dv7-1130us dvd drive measure. Physical Design If you're used to the sleek metallic edges of the latest Asus or Toshiba tablets, the A500 will be a bit of a disappointment. At 6.9 by 10.2 by .4 inches (HWD) and 23.5 ounceshp pavilion dv7-1240us dvd drive, it's slightly thicker and heavier than its top competitors. For instance, the Asus Transformer TF300 ($399, 4 stars) is just a little slimmer at .38 inches and lighter at 22.2 ounces, and the Asus Transformer Prime ($499, 4 stars) is slimmer andhp pavilion dv7-1285dx dvd drivelighter still. But it's not the size that's the issue here. Acer uses a lot ofibm lenovo thinkpad sl410 dvd drive plastic and not much metal in the black-and-silver case, leading to a slightly chintzy feel. The mildly textured plastic back is practical, but doesn't feel premium, even when compared to other plastic tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) ($249, 4 stars). The A510's odd-looking MicroUSB jack comes with an adapter that turns ibm lenovo thinkpad t500 slim dvd driveit into a full-sized USB port. The tablet supports external USB keyboards and storage, as long as that storage is formatted as FAT32. That's pretty hot; it means you can play videos off an externalibm lenovo thinkpad t510 dvd drive hard drive on this tablet. Asus and Toshiba tablets have that feature too. There's also a built-in mic on top, a rotation lock, and dual speakers on the bottom. Turn on the Iconia 510 and you get a workaday 1280-by-800-pixel LCD panelibm thinkpad z61t slim dvd drive, which is absolutely standard on midrange 10-inch tablets. That's on par with the latest models from Asus, Samsung, and Toshiba, although many tablet watchers are holding out for the upcoming 1920-by-1200 models,panasonic uj-845-b which will compete more closely with the new Apple iPad's ($499, 4.5 stars) 2048-by-1536-pixel screen. Acer touts its 9800mAh / 36.26W battery as a curepanasonic uj-868a sata dvd drive for apple for battery-life blues, and we got strong performance with it: 9 hours, 34 minutes of continuous video playback panasonic uj-875with Wi-Fi on and brightness turned to max. That beat out the 7 hours, 53 minutes we got on the Asus TF300 (Best Deal: $417.62 at CircuitCity.com),sony vaio pcg-792l dvd drive not to mention the five and a half hours the new iPad achieved. Android and Apps The A510 runs Android 4.0.3 with a light skin,sony vaio pcg-frv35 dvd drive Acer's Ring UI. Take a look at our full review of Android 4.0 (4 stars), Ice Cream Sandwich, for more details on the basic OS here. Pressing a virtual button at the bottom of the screen sony vaio vgn-t350p slim dvd drivepops up five quick app shortcuts, a carousel of Web bookmarks, and a volume control. The tablet also comes with a few custom widgets and apps. Acer Print lets you print documents or Web pages sony vaio vgn-z520n slim dvd driveo a wide variety of Wi-Fi-enabled printers. Aupeo is a custom radio app. McAfee does antivirus duty, Polaris Office reads Microsoft Office documents, and clear.fi is a DLNA media server. Benchmarks came out looking great, as they generallyacer aspire 5536g dvd drive do on tablets with Nvidia's blazing Tegra 3 processor. Running here at 1.3GHz, the A510 scored faster than the 1.2GHz Asus Transformer Pad TF300T and roughly on par with the original Transformer Prime acer aspire 5720z dvd drive(Best Deal: $499.99 at P.C. Richard & Son), which also had a 1.3GHz quad-core processor. But I encountered strange performance slowdowns when testing the A510. Sometimes on-screen buttons weren't responsive; I found this both on the built-in keyboard and in Zen Pinball. Sometimes screens took an extra moment to render. These issues didn't occur all the time, but they happened often enough to annoy (and to lose some pinball games). 10-inch Android tablets still have a problem with finding good apps in Google Play. As most apps are designed for small phone screens, many prominent apps look pretty awful on large Android tablets. The A510 offers two options to help with this problem: You can download either Tablified Market ($1.49, 4 stars), with a list of 1,500 or so top-notch tablet apps, or Nvidia's Tegra Zone, with a few dozen high-quality games designed for Tegra-powered tablets. Those outlets improve the situation, but app availability still falls far short of the Apple iPad, which has over 200,000 third-party apps with UIs designed specifically for tablets. The A510 connects to the Internet using Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n (albeit only on 2.4GHz, not 5GHz). It had no trouble connecting to our WPA2-protected networks. It also supports Bluetooth 2.1. And there's a blocked-off SIM card slot behind a door on the side, a sloppy touch—either eliminate the slot or make it active. Multimedia and Conclusions The A510 has 32GB of built-in storage as well as a microSD card slot that supports 32GB cards, hidden behind a door on the side. It plays all the usual audio and video formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, WAV, WMV, H.264, MP4, DivX and Xvid (in AVI containers). Video files up to 1080p resolution looked sharp and clear. Oddly, though, the built-in micro HDMI port only put out 720p resolution to our TV. The tablet has a 5-megapixel rear camera and a 1-megapixel front camera. Indoor shots taken with the rear camera looked noisy, with a decidedly purple cast. Not great. Low-light photos showed some blur from low shutter speeds. Outdoors, images were sharper, but still with that purplish color imbalance. The front camera's 1-megapixel still images actually had better colors. The tablet records 1080p video at 30 frames per second outdoors, but indoors that drops to a jittery 16 frames per second. 720p videos indoors clock in at 20 frames per second. As I know the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor can handle 1080p at 30 frames per second without breaking a sweat, this is probably just a cut-rate camera module. If the Iconia Tab A510 cost $50 less, it would have a different rating. Priced at $450, this tablet sits in an uncomfortable middle ground. It certainly has some things going for it, most notably its long battery life and powerful speakers. Unfortunately for the A510, you can get more capable tablets for less. The Asus TF300T, at $399 for a similar 32GB model, gives you 95 percent of the A510's speed, along with a better camera and slimmer form factor, for less money. The Apple iPad 2, currently running $399, is another prime competitor—it isn't as fast as the Iconia 510, but it has far, far more tablet-optimized apps. I'd also keep an eye out for Toshiba's upcoming tablet line, which we did a recent hands-on with. It promises Tegra 3 power and Android 4.0 with USB host mode in a sleeker body.