I got this as an early birthday present. My dad bought it, trying out the 7" tablet size. He likes the size, and replaced the Acer after 3 days with a Samsung with larger storage. So he gave the Acer to me.
I love it! It's a 16:9 screen ratio I believe, and it's a 7" screen, so the width of the tablet in portrait is not so wide that you can't hold it in one hand, and use your other to interact with the screen. It's a perfect width for holding it with both hands and thumbing out an email, like on a BlackBerry. Even in landscape, you can thumb-text pretty easily because the screen is a compact size.
I'm highly impressed with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. This tab (and the processor) gets pretty favorable reviews as far as performance and graphics go. It's a 1 GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB of DDR2 RAM. It has 8 GB of on-board storage, but about 3 GB appear to be taken up with formatting and/or OS files because there are about 5.2 GB available. It also accepts a microSD card up to 32 GB, so it's plenty expandable.
Acer preloaded a pretty unmolested version of Honeycomb 3.2. There's no "Acer skin" or anything else to get in the way; it's pretty much stock Honeycomb. And I like it a lot. There are a few pre-installed Acer apps, but nothing intrusive. The tabbed browser is fantastic, though I hear the browser in Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is even better. All of the Acer tabs are supposed to be getting ICS in February, March, or April, depending on which rumor you read.
It also has a multitude of connectivity options. Obviously, wi-fi is built in and that's the primary mode of communication. It also has a sim card slot, so you can install a sim card and go 3G (and maybe even 4G) if you want to. It has an HDMI-out port and a mini-USB port. It also has on-board Bluetooth, and you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse to use it like a full-on mobile computer.
There are a few negatives. First, you cannot charge the tab via the mini-USB port. It comes with a wall charger, but USB charging is an oversight in my opinion. Apparently, Acer agrees because all of their future tabs (including the new A200 I think) have USB charging. And related to that, the battery life is relatively short. Most battery life quotes are 4-5 hours of continuous video playing, which I guess is how most battery life tests are run. I played with it for about 3 hours last night off-and-on, and the battery ran down from 100% to about 60%, so in "regular" use, I don't see this being a huge issue. But still, the battery is less than 1600 mAh, and some cell phones have larger batteries.
But the flip side is the relatively low price. Best Buy sells them for $259 all day long, and Walmart's got them for $249. If you're looking to get your feet wet in the Android tablet market, this budget tab from Acer is a solid effort.
I love it! It's a 16:9 screen ratio I believe, and it's a 7" screen, so the width of the tablet in portrait is not so wide that you can't hold it in one hand, and use your other to interact with the screen. It's a perfect width for holding it with both hands and thumbing out an email, like on a BlackBerry. Even in landscape, you can thumb-text pretty easily because the screen is a compact size.
I'm highly impressed with the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. This tab (and the processor) gets pretty favorable reviews as far as performance and graphics go. It's a 1 GHz dual-core processor with 1 GB of DDR2 RAM. It has 8 GB of on-board storage, but about 3 GB appear to be taken up with formatting and/or OS files because there are about 5.2 GB available. It also accepts a microSD card up to 32 GB, so it's plenty expandable.
Acer preloaded a pretty unmolested version of Honeycomb 3.2. There's no "Acer skin" or anything else to get in the way; it's pretty much stock Honeycomb. And I like it a lot. There are a few pre-installed Acer apps, but nothing intrusive. The tabbed browser is fantastic, though I hear the browser in Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is even better. All of the Acer tabs are supposed to be getting ICS in February, March, or April, depending on which rumor you read.
It also has a multitude of connectivity options. Obviously, wi-fi is built in and that's the primary mode of communication. It also has a sim card slot, so you can install a sim card and go 3G (and maybe even 4G) if you want to. It has an HDMI-out port and a mini-USB port. It also has on-board Bluetooth, and you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse to use it like a full-on mobile computer.
There are a few negatives. First, you cannot charge the tab via the mini-USB port. It comes with a wall charger, but USB charging is an oversight in my opinion. Apparently, Acer agrees because all of their future tabs (including the new A200 I think) have USB charging. And related to that, the battery life is relatively short. Most battery life quotes are 4-5 hours of continuous video playing, which I guess is how most battery life tests are run. I played with it for about 3 hours last night off-and-on, and the battery ran down from 100% to about 60%, so in "regular" use, I don't see this being a huge issue. But still, the battery is less than 1600 mAh, and some cell phones have larger batteries.
But the flip side is the relatively low price. Best Buy sells them for $259 all day long, and Walmart's got them for $249. If you're looking to get your feet wet in the Android tablet market, this budget tab from Acer is a solid effort.
