Acer Iconia Tab 10
You can normally rely on Acer to provide tech products with cheap price tags and the Acer Iconia Tab 10 is no exception. For a full-size tablet, the asking price of £179 is more than reasonable. It’s cheaper than tablets such as the Google Nexus 9, but it does have some competition – the Kobo Arc 10HD is now under £200, while the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 comes in at just over the £200 mark.
It’s no surprise that the design of the Iconia Tab 10 is basic and plain. The volume rocker sits on the top, while the power button and ports reside on the left side. The microSD card slot isn’t covered up, which looks a little ugly.
This is a typical 10in tablet designed to be used in landscape mode and only comes in a white colour option. The back of the tablet is a silver colour that doesn’t even look like imitation aluminium. The chunky bezel around the screen is unattractive but does mean you can hold the tablet without your fingers getting in the way of the display.
It’s fairly thin at 8.9mm, which is good to see for a cheap tablet, but it is a hefty 520g, so despite the bezel, you won’t want to hold it for too long – especially one-handed.
Powering the Iconia is a quadcore MediaTek MT8127 processor that’s clocked at 1.3GHz. It has 1GB of RAM and in our tests we found performance to be slick considering the price. Calling the recent apps menu and quitting back to the homescreen is surprisingly speedy. Scrolling is smooth too, though some apps can take a little time to load.
Inside is a decent 32GB of storage to play with which is double what we’d expect for the price and around 25GB is available after the OS and pre-loaded content. There’s also a microSDHC card slot for adding up to 32GB more if you wish.
As you can guess from the name, the Iconia Tab 10 offers a 10.1in screen, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio designed to be used predominantly in landscape orientation. Even at this price point, it’s disappointing that Acer has opted for a TFT panel with a WXGA resolution of 1280x800.
Don’t expect good viewing angles, while a pixel density of 149ppi is nothing to get excited about, so don’t anticipate a crisp image either. The screen is perfectly usable but isn’t high quality.
Equally uninspiring are the frontand rear cameras, which are rated at 1- and 4Mp respectively.
Wireless connectivity is basic with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 but alongside the usual headphone and Micro-USB ports is a potentially handy Micro-HDMI port meaning you can connect the Iconia Tab 10 to your TV or a PC monitor easily. A cable isn’t provided, though.
Battery life is important and Acer has fitted the Iconia Tab 10 with a 21.6Wh Lithium-ion battery. In our battery test, we recorded a result of eight hours, 52 minutes which is a good effort.
When it comes to software, the Iconia Tab 10 runs on Android 4.4 KitKat. Acer has confirmed it will be upgraded to version 5.0 Lollipop but has given no time frame for it.
For now, the user interface is largely stock Android – as Google intended it to be – so you get the KitKat recent apps menu and dual drop down bars (one for notifications and one for quick settings). That’s a good thing in our eyes and you can, of course, customise the homescreen panels with your favourite apps and widgets. Acer does add some content, though, including a Touch WakeApp, which enables you to launch an app of your choice or simply the homscreen with a five-finger touch of the display.
Similar to Sony, there’s also something called the ‘Float Gadget’ which gives you a small windows including a calendar, calculator and memo pad.
Those features are handy but what we’re not so impressed with is the amount of pre-loaded apps. It’s a lot like the Toshiba laptop opposite. There are a number of Acer’s own apps, Amazon ones plus others such as Evernote, Skype, OfficeSuite, TuneIn Radio, Zinio and McAfee Security.
It’s a long list and might save you the bother of downloading an app you want anyway, but we think it’s better to simply choose what you want rather than the decision being made for you. It also takes up valuable storage space and the real kick in the teeth is that most of them can’t be uninstalled.
Verdict
There’s little to get excited about with the Acer Iconia Tab 10 but that’s fine with a price tag of £179. It’s plain in appearance and heavy, but apart from a few too many preloaded apps, the tablet offers good performance and decent storage plus a handy Micro-HDMI port. Overall, it’s a good choice if you’re looking to spend under £200 on a large Android tablet.