Acer Iconia A110 8GB Android tablet review
Tegra 3-based Asus Nexus 7 worrier?
Acer’s Iconia A110 7in Android tablet is the first real competition that Google's Nexus 7 has faced. It’s similarly sized, similarly priced and uses the same quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 underpinnings. It also runs the same Jelly Bean version of Android.
Lucky seven? Acer's Iconia A110
The main technical distinctions are that the Acer’s screen isn’t as good but to counterbalance that you get a MicroSD slot and mini HDMI port. Storage expansion and the facility to connect to a HD telly are clearly worth having, but how much poorer than the Nexus 7’s 720p IPS panel is the A110’s 1024 x 600 LCD?
With a pixel density of 170dpi, versus the Nexus 7’s 216dpi, things are certainly not as crisp or sharp. That said, the A110’s display still does a better job than any 10.1in 1280 x 800 Android tablet which has to make do with only 149dpi, so I wouldn’t want to turn this differentiating molehill into a mountain.
Mini HDMI on-board, along with micro SD storage expansion
Moreover, there’s nothing wrong with the colour saturation or the available brightness but viewing angles are nowhere near as robust as on the Nexus 7 and there is a lot of chromatic shift about the long axis. This may be a deal breaker if you anticipate regularly using your A110 with a stand to watch video.
At this point, I was planning on saying something about the Acer having a home screen that flips between landscape and portrait, a feature whose absence from the Nexus 7 is a constant niggle to me. However, since the Android 4.1.2 update rolled this feature out to all Jelly Bean devices while I was writing this review, I’ll move on.
Next page: Has Beans
COMMENTS
This review predates the Nexus 7 price changes...
The review wrote:
"An 8GB A110 will set you back £180 which is a tenner more than the equivalent Nexus 7 after you add post and packaging – the 8GB model only being available from Google’s Play Store. If you want to buy a Nexus 7 over the counter, you have to go for the £200 16GB model, which may give the Acer an edge in the impulse purchase stakes."
However, the 8GB Nexus 7 has been replaced with the 16GB model at the same price. So you can buy the 16GB Nexus 7 for £159 or the 32GB one for £199.
So now the £180 Asus has 8GB less storage than the £159 Nexus 7... Which probably means almost no-one will buy one.
query:
Why 70%? What is actually wrong with it? For 70% I would expect "average nothing special" but looking at the specs it should run all the usual apps, play games rather well etc. Was the WIFI rubbish too?
Re: 50 quid cashback at Comet
The £50 cash back is from Acer themselves direct and not through the retailer. The main risk on cashback is forgetting the window in which you can claim it.
Re: 50 quid cashback
Thought you had misread the cashback as It was £30 so it seems they have upped their offer to £50. For £130 it's a lot of tablet and worth a punt on and at that price I think it should be 90%.
Looks like my daughter will be getting one of these for Christmas as it looks great for kids.
Re: So it'an Acer.....
Indeed, Acer had issue in the early 2000's but over the past few years we have had a few cheap budget almost throwaway laptops for our contractors that have outlasted HPs and Dells. We were skeptical about the warranty repair system too but for £20 we added it. Claimed twice on about 30 laptops so far (both HDDs) with no issues at all.
Whilst I agree 30 odd laptops is not indicative of the entire range we have nothing to complain about.
