acer iconia a100 Tab A100 (Wi-Fi)

The sweetest Honeycomb tablet we've seen at this point packs modern Android goodness right pocket-sized package, with OS version going far in order to resolve Android tablets' biggest problem to date: the possible lack of decent tablet-sepcific apps. But the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100's petite form means a too-small battery. Alas, though we're giving this excellent little tablet a powerful recommendation, its battery woes ensure that it stays from attaining Editors' Choice status.

The Wi-Fi-only acer iconia a100 Tab A100 costs $329.99 a great 8GB model and $349.99 for the 16GB unit, putting it down the middle of the 7-inch tablet realm between cheapo models like the Coby Kyros ($199, 2 stars) and also the HTC Flyer ($499, 3.5 stars) and BlackBerry PlayBook ($499, 2.5 stars). There's really no policy for this being grabbed using a U.S. 3G carrier, unlike its brother the Iconia A501, which is coming out from AT&T.

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Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Horizontal
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Acer Iconia Tab A100 : Back

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Physical Features, Networking and Battery Life
Acer is not a king of industrial design, as well as the Iconia Tab A100 is a bit of any clunker in regards to looks. That's OK though; this tablet has a lot of other pursuits deciding on it. The Iconia Tab A100 can be a 7.7-by-4.6-by-0.5-inch (HWD), 13.9-ounce tablet produced from shiny plastic using a cheap-looking silver design on its blue-gray back. Both front and back feel a little greasy, and often attract fingerprints. The tablet incorporates a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack, Volume buttons, an Orientation Lock switch, an energy button, and a few ports at the base. It charges from a proprietary adapter rather than a standard micro USB connection, it includes a micro USB port for connecting to PCs, plus a micro HDMI port to hook the tablet about an HDTV.

Switch the tablet on might see a 1024-by-600 touch-screen LCD of average brightness. At its Automatic Brightness setting it's noticeably dim plus the screen wrong in size reflective, but increase the brightness also it looks great. The stereo speakers on the bottom are loud enough to obtain their point across, but they're tinny, just as all the other tablet speakers. I got much better sound over the headphone jack as well as over a couple of stereo Bluetooth headphones. Acer advertises 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi here, but we couldn't find any kind of our 5GHz Wi-Fi networks using this tablet, though connecting to two.4GHz networks was simple.

Curiously, the Iconia A100 also has a blocked Sim slot, even though slot is mentioned inside tablet's ramp up guide. This is usually a lost opportunity, as I'd like to own the possibility to pair the A100 with the AT&T prepaid tablet plan.

The Iconia A100's Achilles heel, and the reason it's not getting an Editors' Choice nod, is its poor life of the battery, as a result of an inferior-than-usual 3060mAh battery. (Most tablets have 4000mAh or larger batteries.) We simply got three hours, 53 minutes of video playback using a charge, too few for a cross-country flight. From the 7-inch tablet realm, that compares poorly to the 8 hours, 15 minutes we have got with the BlackBerry PlayBook, or the 6 hours, 32 minutes with the Samsung Galaxy Tab ($399, 3.5 stars). It is equally under there are of all 10-inch tablets, for example the Apple ipad tablet 2 ($499, 4.5 stars), which lasted 7 hours, a half-hour.

Android and Apps
The Iconia Tab A100 will be the first tablet shipping with Android 3.2. This is a issue and also a wonderful thing. The Android Market, home to greater than 200,000 phone apps, is hideously broken for tablets, and Android 3.2 does just enough to repair things. It is rather difficult to acquire apps devised for tablet screens in the Market. While phone apps run, they generally look awkward or poorly designed.

Android 3.2's major new feature is Zoom Mode, which convinces phone apps likely running for a smaller phone screen and magnifies text and pictures rather then entering chunks on the screen with space. This will never be ideal for 10-inch tablets; as we've seen around the iPad, apps intended for 3.5-inch screens and scaled up can nevertheless look very grainy over a 10-inch screen.