Acer Iconia Tab A510
The games are over, but this special Olympic Edition tablet with winning battery life could still be a gold medallist in your eyes.
“The A510 proudly displays the Olympic rings, but these look dated now the games are over”
● PRICE FROM £370 ● COMPANY ACER ● WEBSITE acer.co.uk
Style-wise, the A510 looks and feels much like the original iPad, although its 10.1in screen has a wider aspect ratio. The resolution is higher at 1280x800, but this is standard for an 10in Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. At 680g and 11mm thick, it's no featherweight and isn't all that comfortable to hold after a while. The plastic back panel looks like metal, but lacks the reassuring feel you get with real aluminium. This panel proudly displays the Olympic rings, but these look dated now the games have fi nished. A quad-core 1.4GHz nVidia Tegra 3 T30 processor powers the A510.
This quad-core chip means Android runs smoothly, even with several apps open. It's also adept at playing games – even intensive titles such as Grand Theft Auto III. The Acer averaged 1,258 points in GeekBench, making it a fair bit slower than the Toshiba AT300. In real-world usage, though, web pages load quickly and browsing the web is a decent experience. Image quality is good, but the screen's brightness is average and colours are slightly more muted than some Android tablets. Viewing angles aren't restrictive; it's the glossy, refl ective screen fi nish that's the main problem.
There's 32GB of internal memory, which can be expanded via a microSD slot, while a micro-HDMI output lets you hook up the A510 to a large-screen telly. The rear 5Mp camera and front-facing 1Mp twin aren't great. Technically, the rear snapper can capture 1080p footage, but the resulting quality is good only for Facebook or YouTube. Similarly, photos lack detail, and the sweep panorama mode produced blurry images with conspicuous joins.
Acer has made several changes to Android, including an HTC-style lock screen where you can drag the lock icon to one of four customisable apps to instantly launch them. Another addition is the ring interface, which is launched by a circular icon in the bottom status bar. This also provides four shortcuts, which are customisable, but default to screenshot, Gallery, Settings and Browser. Both Wi-Fi (802.11n) and Bluetooth 2.1 are integrated, as is a GPS receiver. Battery life is respectable at 9.5 hours of video playback.
SPECIFICATIONS
10.1in (1280x800) capacitive multiotouch screen; Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich; 1.4GHz nVidia Tegra 3 T30 quad-core processor; 1GB RAM; 16/32GB storage; microSD; 802.11n; Bluetooth 2.1; GPS; 259x10x15mm; 680g
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