acer iconia a100 Tab A100 (Wi-Fi)

The sweetest Honeycomb tablet we have seen thus far packs modern Android goodness right pocket-sized package, with OS version going far in order to resolve Android tablets' biggest problem to date: deficiency of decent tablet-sepcific apps. Even so the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100's petite form means a too-small battery. Alas, though we're giving an excellent little tablet a strong recommendation, its battery woes ensure that is stays from attaining Editors' Choice status.

The Wi-Fi-only iconia acer a100 Tab A100 costs $329.99 to have an 8GB model and $349.99 for the 16GB unit, putting it in the middle of the 7-inch tablet realm between cheapo models such as Coby Kyros ($199, 2 stars) and the HTC Flyer ($499, 3.5 stars) and BlackBerry PlayBook ($499, 2.5 stars). There's no cover this being obtained by way of a U.S. 3G carrier, unlike its brother the Iconia A501, which is coming out from AT&T.

View Slideshow See all (6) slides
Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Horizontal
Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Angle
Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Horizontal
Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Back

More

Physical Features, Networking and Battery Life
Acer is not a king of business design, along with the Iconia Tab A100 is of any clunker in relation to looks. That's OK though; this tablet has a lot of other stuff taking it. The Iconia Tab A100 is actually a 7.7-by-4.6-by-0.5-inch (HWD), 13.9-ounce tablet produced from shiny plastic using a cheap-looking silver design on its blue-gray back. The back and front feel just a little greasy, and usually attract fingerprints. The tablet contains a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack, Volume buttons, an Orientation Lock switch, an influence button, and a couple of ports on the bottom. It charges coming from a proprietary adapter rather than a standard micro USB connection, just about all carries a micro USB port for connecting to PCs, including a micro HDMI port to hook the tablet up to an HDTV.

Switch the tablet on and you'll visit a 1024-by-600 touch-screen LCD of average brightness. At its Automatic Brightness setting it's noticeably dim as well as screen wrong in size reflective, but pump up the brightness and it also looks great. The stereo speakers at the base are loud enough to acquire their point across, but they're tinny, just as all your other tablet speakers. I got greater sound with the headphone jack and more than a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones. Acer advertises 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi here, but we couldn't find any kind of our 5GHz Wi-Fi networks using this type of tablet, though connecting to 2.4GHz networks was simple.

Curiously, the Iconia A100 also offers a blocked Sim slot, even though slot is mentioned inside tablet's quick start guide. It is a lost opportunity, as I'd would delight the opportunity to pair the A100 having an AT&T prepaid tablet plan.

The Iconia A100's Achilles heel, plus the reason it's not getting an Editors' Choice nod, is its poor battery life, as a result of an inferior-than-usual 3060mAh battery. (Most tablets have 4000mAh or larger batteries.) We only got three hours, 53 minutes of video playback with a charge, not enough for your cross-country flight. Within the 7-inch tablet realm, that compares poorly to your 8 hours, 15 minutes we have got from your BlackBerry PlayBook, or the six hours, 32 minutes with the Samsung Galaxy Tab ($399, 3.5 stars). It's also fewer than there are of all 10-inch tablets, for example the Apple iPad 2 ($499, 4.5 stars), which lasted 7 hours, half an hour.

Android and Apps
The Iconia Tab A100 would be the first tablet shipping with Android 3.2. This can be a big issue as well as a top notch thing. The Android Market, where you can greater than 200,000 phone apps, is hideously broken for tablets, and Android 3.2 does plenty of to correct things. It's very rare to find apps made for tablet screens out there. While phone apps run, they often times look awkward or poorly designed.

Android 3.2's major new feature is Zoom Mode, which convinces phone apps that they are running over a smaller phone screen and magnifies text and images instead of entering chunks from the screen with blank space. This won't be just the thing for 10-inch tablets; as we have seen around the iPad, apps made for 3.5-inch screens and scaled up could look very grainy using a 10-inch screen.