Acer Iconia Tab A200

The Acer Iconia Tab A200 is Acer's latest 10.1" Android tablet, and it's very affordable at $349 for the 16 gig model and $329 for the 8 gig version. In fact, we're pretty impressed at what you get for the price: a sharp and colorful 1280 x 800 capacitive touch screen, a dual core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, a gig of RAM and 16 gigs of storage (in the more commonly available 16 version that we recommend). Basically, you get a 2011 Android 10" tablet with a full set of features at a low price for 2012. The tablet ships with Android OS 3.2 Honeycomb but in mid-February 2012 Acer offered a free upgrade to OS 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (you can download using the tablet's update function).

 The A200 is a slightly slimmer and lighter version of the Acer Iconia Tab A500, and to our eye the display has improved. Video playback performance of MPEG4 content is most definitely improved, as you'll see in our video review. And you get that Acer special touch: a full size USB host port that works with USB peripherals including keyboards, mice, game controllers, flash drives and external hard drives (NTFS too!). Only Acer and Toshiba offer built-in full USB ports: some other Android tablets have micro USB ports that are compatible with USB host adapters, and the Asus Transformer tablets have a full size USB port in the $149 keyboard dock that's sold separately. Acer does a nice job of adding USB driver support to the OS and external storage items like videos and photos appear in Gallery, while music appears in the Music app (if you have a large drive with lots of files this can take a minute or two). There's also a microSD card slot, so storage possibilities are good here.

Design and Ergonomics

This isn't an uber-skinny tablet, but we don't mind because it's actually comfortable to hold and grip. The rubbery backside (available in deep red or dark gray) is easy to hold, though not chic. The Acer A200 feels and works like a tablet that was meant to be held and used rather than look pretty. The sides are curved for good ergonomics, and ports are located for easy access. The only thing we don't like is the speaker placement: the stereo speakers are at the lower corners where you'll likely grip it in landscape mode. And these speakers are already terribly volume-challenged. You'll need wired or Bluetooth headphones to enjoy music or videos. The 3.5mm jack sounds a bit bass-heavy to our ears, but most folks enjoy plenty of bass these days. Volume is acceptable using wired and Bluetooth audio gear. The mic is happily much better than the Iconia A500's, and we were easily heard over Skype.

The charger has a barrel tip and is the same wall wart charger that's used on prior Acer Android tablets. That means the side micro USB port is available for use when charging, which we like. A full size USB 2.0 port lives on the upper left side (when held in landscape mode), and the microSD card slot and reset hole live under a plastic door on the left side. The tablet doesn't support USB charging.

The 0.48" thick tablet won't win design awards, but it's not bad looking and feels sturdy. The back has a textured pattern and it shows some fingerprints but is easily cleaned with damp cloth and a tiny bit of soft soap, as is the display. The display has decent but not IPS caliber viewing angles, with none of the peculiarities of the Acer Iconia Tab A100 7" Android tablet. Colors are good and brightness is fine for indoor use, but it fades in very bright light and outdoors. It looks good for video watching and photo viewing, as long as you're not in an extremely bright room where the just average brightness and glossy screen glare detract.

Gaming and Video Playback

The Tegra 2 does well with 3D games, thanks to Nvidia's involvement and promotion of Tegra Zone games. The Acer Iconia Tab A200 does a fine job with Tegra Zone games like Riptide, Grand Theft Auto III, Dungeon Defenders and Shine Runner (see our video demo using a USB game controller below). But the Tegra 2 usually falls short when it comes to playing high profile 720p and 1080p video thanks to less than stellar 2D acceleration. Happily, the Acer has better codecs and drivers, so it can play 720p high profile H.264 MPEG video fine, and it can play 1080p standard profile video competently. Since the tablet has a 720p display and no HDMI out, 1080p high profile content that plays with dropped frames isn't much of an issue unless you're using DLNA WiFi streaming to an HD TV to play videos. If you want to watch Netflix and YouTube streaming video, the Acer Iconia A200 is a fine choice, and it can handle 720p standard and high profile locally stored MPEG4 content but not 1080p high profile MPEG4 content where it drops frames but does much better than the Acer Iconia Tab A500 that played 1080p high profile at 2-4 fps.

CPU and Performance

The Acer Iconia Tab A200 does well for a 1GHz Tegra 2 tablet, with average range Quadrant, Linpack and AnTuTu benchmark scores. It does very well on the Sunspider JavaScript test with a 2185 score (lower numbers are better), and real world browsing performance reflects that score. The tablet handles Adobe Flash playback and controls well and it loads full desktop sites with good speed. Pinch zooming and scrolling speeds are likewise good. 

Battery Life

Acer claims the 2 cell battery sealed inside the tablet is good for 8 hours of use. While that won't break any tablet records, it's acceptable and ours manages 7 hours with brightness set at 50% and WiFi on with mixed use that includes web, email, streaming Netfix video for an hour and playing a few YouTube videos.

Software

Acer pre-loads Netflix, Adobe Flash, VirusScan, SoundHound, Documents to Go (an MS Office viewer, you can upgrade to get edit and create abilities or buy another Office compatible suite for $20 or so), Evernote, Zinio (a very attractive magazine app) and the full suite of Google apps such as Android Market, Maps, Navigation, YouTube, Google+, Gmail, email and the web browser. Acer apps include AUPEO! (online radio), clear.fi, Media Server (DLNA server) and SocialJogger for social networking with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. There's also a Voice Recorder app and a link to buy Gameloft HD games available for purchase. Acer's DLNA apps work well, but keep in mind that most of the third party apps are freely available on the Android Market, so aren't exactly a value-added (the same is true of many other Android tablets' software bundles).

Conclusion

For the price, we really like the Acer Iconia Tab A200. Acer's doing a good job of chasing the affordable and entry level market with their tablets, and we can see the A200 selling well in Walmart where the Iconia A500 once reigned king. The tablet is sturdy, has a decent capacitive display that's fine for indoor viewing, solid Tegra 2 performance and a full size USB port and 8 or 16 gigs of storage plus microSD card expansion. It's not razor thin, but it's comfortable to hold thanks to its more ample girth and grippy back. At 1.5 lbs., you'll notice the weight after 30 minutes of use vs. lighter tablets like the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad 2. If you're in the market for an affordable tablet that's upgradable to Ice Cream Sandwich, the A200 is worth a look as long as you don't want a rear camera or HDMI port and can live with the whisper-quiet speakers.

Acer Iconia Tab A100

Looking for a 7" Android Honeycomb tablet? As of this writing, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is your only choice. The HTC  Flyer/HTC EVO View 4g runs OS 2.3 Gingerbread, last year's 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab likewise is running 2.x , the 7" Lenovo A1 runs Gingerbread and it looks like the upcoming 7" Viewsonic will run Gingerbread as well. At the moment, it looks like the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 will be the only Honeycomb 3.2 competition (likely at a higher price). In the absence of competition, the Acer A100 certainly becomes much more appealing, but even if there were competition, this 7" powerhouse tablet can hold its own. The Acer Iconia A100 packs all the features of 10" Android Honeycomb tablets into a smaller, much more portable package that can fit in a large pocket or purse. It has the same 1GHz dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU, a gig of RAM, 8 or 16 gigs of storage, HDMI, WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and a GPS with compass. At just $329 for the 8 gig model and $349 for the 16 gig model (both expandable via microSD cards), the little Iconia seems like a bargain. The tablet ships with Android OS 3.2 Honeycomb; the latest version of the tablet OS that has support for 7" tablets and running Android OS 2.x apps in stretched screen mode.

Display

The A100 has a 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display--that's the same resolution as better quality 7" tablets like the HTC Flyer and Galaxy Tab, and higher than most ultra-budget tablets that sell for $200 or less. The display is bright, extremely sharp and it has very high contrast. It looks absolutely great head-on, but viewing angles are oddly narrow when viewing from the bottom in landscape mode. Hold the tablet in front of you to watch a video and it looks great. Lay the tablet flat on a table and the video becomes unwatchable. If you hate narrow viewing angles, the tablet might drive you crazy. But there are workarounds: side viewing angles are wide, so those aren't much of an issue. If you wish to lay the tablet flat on a table while viewing content in landscape mode, simply rotate it upside down (with the home button to the left), and the viewing angle will be sufficient. If you hold it directly in front of you with no angle of rotation, the upside down view isn't as bright as the rightside-up view. Got that? Since this isn't an IPS display and it is glossy like all tablets, it's viewable outdoors but the display is harder to see.

Design and Ergonomics

The Acer Iconia A100 is more rectangular than most 7" tablets. If you have smaller hands, you'll find it easier to hold in portrait mode when reading a book, and widescreen movie watching is perfect with little or no letterboxing on this 16:9 aspect ratio display. The tablet weighs 0.92 lbs., similar to the 7" Galaxy Tab and BlackBerry PlayBook. When using it as an ebook reader, my arms didn't tire as they do with 10" tablets, and the tablet worked well with Aldiko, Barnes & Noble Nook but not the Amazon Kindle app. It seems we'll need an updated version of Kindle that works with 1024 x 600 Honeycomb 3.2 tablets. In the meantime, older versions of Kindle (2.05 is the latest of older versions floating around the Net) work on the Iconia A100.

 Wireless

The A100 doesn't have 3G, though there is a covered slot where a SIM card carrier could've been installed (it's next to the microSD card slot). If Acer ships a 3G version, it will have the model number A101, just as the A500 with 3G is the A501. The tablet ships with WiFi 802.11b/g/n single band, and it has average range for a tablet. That means it doesn't have the range of full sized notebooks, but it does maintain a good signal up to 35 feet when using Apple's AirPort Extreme wireless router and 40 feet with the D-Link DIR-655 (both with walls between the tablet and router). Beyond 55 feet (with walls in between) the signal becomes too unstable to rely on.

The Acer also has Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR and a GPS with digital compass. In our tests using Google Maps and Google Navigation, the A100 got a fix quickly indoors and maintained that fix when driving (we used an HTC Sensation 4G as a mobile hotspot so the Iconia could continually download fresh map data on the road).

Software and Multimedia

Acer customizes the launcher with groups that are basically icons that lead to custom folders for social networking, multimedia, reading and gaming. These are actually a very handy way to organize apps (I have 55 apps on my tablet and it's not fun wading through them to find what I want), and you can add and remove apps from these groups. There's also Acer's SocialJogger for Facebook and Twitter social networking, Clear.fi, nemoPlayer (an attractive music player, photo viewer and video player), Auopeo!, Movie Studio, MusicA, Zinio and Google Books. This is much the same software as bundled with the A500 tablet.

The tablet comes with the standard suite of Google apps including the Webkit web browser, email, gmail, the Android Market, YouTube player, Gtalk with video chat, Google Books, Google Maps and Navigation, a calculator, PIM apps, a clock, camera and camcorder apps and Gallery.

The tablet has a 2 megapixel front video chat camera that works decently with Gtalk and a rear 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash that takes sharp photos and 720p video.

For streaming content, the Acer Iconia A100 supports Google Movie rentals (integrated into the Android Market), streaming TV episodes from TV networks using Adobe Flash but not Hulu (Hulu blocks mobile clients, though Hulu Plus is available for some mobile devices). It also works with Amazon Instant Video and Crackle.com (both use Adobe Flash). There's no Netflix, but we're hopeful it will arrive at some point since we're seeing it on other Tegra 2 Honeycomb tablets like the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 and Asus Eee Pad Transformer. 

Battery Life

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 has two 1530 mAh Lithium Ion batteries (the A500 also has a dual battery configuration). 3,060 mAh is a bit lower than the 4,000 mAh battery used in the 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab or 5,000+ found in 10" tablets. With WiFi on, and display brightness set to 40% we found the tablet lasted 5.5 hours on a charge when playing casual games, browsing the web, playing a few YouTube videos, checking email and using social networking apps. That's about the same as the 7" Galaxy Tab, but shorter than the 4,000 mAh single core CPU HTC Flyer by almost 2 hours. We don't expect the same battery life from a 7" dual core Tegra 2 tablet as we get from a 10" tablet since the 10" has room for a larger battery, but we'd like to see closer to 7 hours from the Acer. The tablet charges very quickly, as a consolation.

Conclusion

Granted, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 currently has no competition in the 7" Android Honeycomb tablet market, but even if that weren't the case, we'd still recommend it. In fact, I bought one for myself. With a starting price of $329, this little tablet is extremely portable and it packs the power of a 10" Honeycomb tablet. It's very fast, has a bright and sharp display (albeit with weird viewing angles), is stable and it runs the latest version of Honeycomb. It handles Adobe Flash well, plays MPEG4 video like a champ, has a GPS and all the trimmings you'd expect from a tier 1 tablet. The battery life could be better though, and the viewing angles will be an issue for some folks.

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