Acer Iconia Tab A700

The A700 looks suspiciously like the Acer Iconia Tab A510. Well, they're both made by the same company, so I guess it's not that suspicious.

(Credit: Acer)

With the release of the new iPad, Apple threw down the tablet screen clarity gauntlet, by packing over 3 million pixels into a 9.7-inch display. Now, the first 10-inch Android tablet to break the 1,280x800-pixel barrier (the Toshiba Excite 13 runs at 1,600x900 pixels), the Acer Iconia Tab A700, goes on sale today for $449.

Design
The Acer Iconia Tab A700 is quite similar in design to the Iconia Tab A510. As such, the design and features sections here follow that review very closely.

The A700's left and right edges are adorned with silver plating; the back feels like a mixture of rubber and leather (in a good way), making the tablet easy to grip; the corners are well-rounded, and the tablet just feels comfortable to hold. In fact it's one of the most comfortable tablets I've ever had the pleasure of holding, with the leathery back (available in either silver or black) reducing the likelihood it'll accidentally slip from my hands. From a purely aesthetic standpoint, however, the A510 looks dull and sort of boxy compared with more stylish tablets.

On the left edge sits the power/lock button and a headphone jack. On the opposite edge is a Micro-HDMI port and a door covering a 64GB-capacity microSD slot. In the middle of the bottom edge is a Micro-USB port next to a reset pinhole, with speakers on the far right and left sides. On the top edge, from left to right, lies a volume rocker, a rotation lock switch, and a microphone pinhole. A 1-megapixel camera sits in the middle of the top bezel with an ambient light sensor to its left. Directly on the back sits a 5-megapixel rear camera.

Software features
The A700 comes preinstalled with Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich). Check out the Ice Cream Sandwich section of the Iconia Tab A200 review for detailed info on the improvements Android 4.0 makes over Honeycomb (Android 3.0).

With the A700, Acer includes a number of custom software features that those familiar with previous Acer tablets should recognize. Chief among them is Acer Ring. Ring is an app shortcut and carousel-like bookmark hub that appears after you tap the green ring symbol at the bottom of the screen. Each bookmark or app is completely customizable, allowing you to include up to four apps and seemingly as many bookmarks as you like.

While this would seem useful, accessing apps the normal way is already so quick and easy that adding an extra step like tapping the ring puts you that much farther from your goal. To be fair, we're talking about mere seconds here, but it does affect the overall experience and I feel its usefulness is limited. Thankfully, a quick trip to the settings gives you the option to disable the feature.

Acer Print is a built-in setting that allows you to add printers either through your network or by bar code scan, and then print directly from the tablet.

Hardware features
The A700 is Acer's second tablet, after the A510, to house Nvidia's quad-core processor, the Tegra 3. It includes a 1.3GHz version of the processor, compared with the 1.2GHz version found in the Asus TF300. The A700 also includes 1GB of DDR2 RAM -- as opposed to the faster DDR3 RAM also used in the TF300. It has 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth 2.1, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and GPS. Only one 32GB-capacity configuration is currently available.

2,304,000 pixels
Back in April of 2012, I got a chance to spend a few, brief moments playing around with the A700. As mentioned, it very closely mimics the design of other recent Acer tablets, with its screen being the one, true standout feature. Most 10-inch Android tablets sport a resolution of 1,280x800 pixels (16:10 aspect ratio), while the iPad 2 runs at 1,024x768 pixels (4:3).

The A700 is the first Android tablet with a 1,920x1,200-pixel (16:10) screen resolution. However, while impressive, compared with previous Android tablets, this comes nowhere near the pixel density of the new iPad's 2,048x1,536-pixel (4:3) screen. Still, I did notice a definite clarity upgrade when viewing text on the Web compared with 1,280x800-pixel screens. Also, although Acer has yet to identify the panel technology used, viewing angles do seem to match that of IPS-based screens.

I'm expecting to receive an A700 review unit soon and will be sure to put it through its paces, comparing it with the best tablet screens currently available. Be on the lookout for that.

(courtesy:cnet.com)