TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Eskom employees returning to work

      29 June 2022

      E.tv in stunning victory over minister in digital TV fight

      28 June 2022

      It’s official: stage-6 load shedding is here

      28 June 2022

      Stage-6 load shedding highly likely later today

      28 June 2022

      Prosus sale plan sends Chinese tech stocks tumbling

      28 June 2022
    • World

      Pictures: Chinese spacecraft acquires images of entire planet of Mars

      29 June 2022

      Arm aims for leg-up in smartphone games with new chip tech

      29 June 2022

      Warnings of a final bitcoin ‘washout’

      29 June 2022

      Sony launches into PC gaming hardware

      29 June 2022

      Ether holds its breath for the Merge

      28 June 2022
    • In-depth

      The great crypto crash: the fallout, and what happens next

      22 June 2022

      Goodbye, Internet Explorer – you really won’t be missed

      19 June 2022

      Oracle’s database dominance threatened by rise of cloud-first rivals

      13 June 2022

      Everything Apple announced at WWDC – in less than 500 words

      7 June 2022

      Sheryl Sandberg’s ad empire leaves a complicated legacy

      2 June 2022
    • Podcasts

      How your organisation can triage its information security risk

      22 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E06 – ‘Apple Silicon’

      15 June 2022

      The youth might just save us

      15 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E05 – ‘Nvidia: The Green Goblin’

      8 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E04 – ‘The story of Intel – part 2’

      1 June 2022
    • Opinion

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022

      A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

      19 May 2022

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»Gadgets & Reviews»Acer’s Iconia A500 Tab: an exercise in optimism

    Acer’s Iconia A500 Tab: an exercise in optimism

    Gadgets & Reviews By Editor12 September 2011
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    Just about every computer and phone manufacturer now makes tablets in the hope of grabbing some of the scraps of market share Apple doesn’t hold with the iPad. Acer has a couple of tablet offerings, but its headline act is the Iconia Tab A500, a 10,1-inch Android-powered monster with innards that compare well to rival offerings.

    Some of the A500’s vital statistics include a 10,1-inch capacitive LCD touch screen with a resolution of 1280×800 that supports multi-touch gestures with up to ten fingers, a light sensor for auto-brightness adjustments, and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling or checking for spinach in your teeth.

    Behind its not-unattractive visage — albeit one more prone to fingerprints than its competitors and less than great in sunlight — is a dual-core 1GHz Tegra processor and 1GB of RAM, meaning lag is no problem even when running a range of applications simultaneously.

    There are all the usual bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from tablets, like a microphone, surprisingly good speaker, accelerometer, GPS, multi-tab browsing and Bluetooth, but it’s the unexpected additions that are the A500’s strongest selling point.

    Though the mini-HDMI port isn’t unheard of and neither is the microUSB port — which unfortunately is only for data transfer, not charging, purposes — Acer has included a full-sized USB 2.0 port, making it a far more flexible device than any of its competitors’ products.

    Not only can you plug in an external hard drive, but card readers and other USB devices suddenly become tablet friendly. Naturally, there are limitations to what will work with the A500, but it is nevertheless a great differentiating feature.

    Another of these differentiators is the LED flash that accompanies the rear-facing, 5-megapixel camera, which also includes autofocus and the ability to shoot video at 720p at 29 frames per second. There’s also a microSD slot that allows for expansion of the default 16GB or 32GB of onboard storage.

    The rear of the Iconia A500 (click image to enlarge)

    The A500 is Wi-Fi only, while the A501 offers support for 3G. The A500 appears to include a crippled Sim slot under the same flap as the microSD slot, but it’s covered with a sticker that reads: “Warranty void if seal is broken.”

    At R5 399 for the 32GB version, the A500 costs as much as the equivalent Wi-Fi-only iPad 2. However, it weighs slightly more than the Apple device and, despite the price, the A500’s build quality doesn’t feel as good as those of Samsung’s or Motorola’s tablets, let alone the iPad.

    The seam running around the edge of the device is unsettling, and prompts visions of the device winding up in two parts if dropped accidentally. Also, although the rest of the buttons feel decent enough, the orientation lock/unlock button and volume rocker feel flimsy and cheap.

    Then there’s the proprietary charger, something common to most tablets, but annoying nevertheless and a reminder of the days of proprietary cellphone chargers. The charger also seems bulkier than it should, and rather than incorporating a data cable with a power adaptor the A500 requires carrying both.

    There are two big failings with the Iconia A500. The first is its size. Not only is it quite thick at 13,5mm, but tipping the scales at 730g it weighs more than the first-generation iPad and about the same as the Motorola Xoom.

    There’s one another failing: poor battery life. Plugged in and fully charged on day one, with Wi-Fi left on and less than 30 minutes of use, the A500 was almost dead the by the morning of day two. Having charged it again, by the end of day two and having played around with it intermittently for no more than two hours and having had it on standby for another eight, the battery charge had fallen to 27%.

    The Iconia A500 runs Android 3.1

    The A500 gets around six hours of use to a charge, which is relatively poor next to the competition. What’s more troubling is the standby time. Perhaps Acer needs to refine how its tablets behave when they’re on, but idle.

    In its defence, the A500 offers excellent functionality, a respectable display with superb viewing angles, a plain-and-simple Android interface atop Android 3.1, some great features other tablets don’t offer, and it has a respectable design.

    However, the price, in conjunction with the build quality, brings to mind a (somewhat paraphrased) line from the cult Australian film The Castle: “Tell ’em they’re dreamin'”.  — Craig Wilson, TechCentral

    • Subscribe to our free daily newsletter
    • Follow us on Twitter or on Facebook
    Acer Apple Iconia A500 Tab
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleEOH firing on all cylinders
    Next Article Vodacom takes aim at BlackBerry ‘abuse’

    Related Posts

    Arm aims for leg-up in smartphone games with new chip tech

    29 June 2022

    Apple, Android phones hacked by Italian spyware

    24 June 2022

    Tech giants form metaverse standards body, without Apple

    22 June 2022
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    How your business can help hybrid workers effectively

    28 June 2022

    Hands off our satellite spectrum!

    27 June 2022

    Watch | Telviva One: adapting to the requirements of business

    24 June 2022
    Opinion

    Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

    21 June 2022

    Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

    13 June 2022

    A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

    19 May 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.