Hands On: Is Acer’s Iconia Tab A510 Fit on behalf of Olympic Competition?

If you’re an machine device manufacturer featuring in today’s crowded tablet seat, you take part in better problems than worrying in relation to how you’re free to compete with Apple. Otherwise even addressing the iPad challenge, you take part in to kick, claw and bully your way through a sphere of tablet Dell FK890 competitors besides running Google’s cellular phone OS.

Samsung, Asus and Motorola: They’re all liability their top to sweep up with the aim of lesser universe of tablet-curious consumers who haven’t together Team iPad. And at this point Acer is making an extra endeavor on behalf of relevancy featuring in the 10.1-inch machine tablet seat.

Does the in mint condition $450 slate become a compelling argument? Rebuff, it doesn’t. That’s our opening takeaway afterward in relation to four hours of hands-on employ.

Having the status of soon having the status of I took the A510 unfashionable of its box, I noticed the back of the tablet is garlanded with the familiar five-ringed logo of the Olympic games. It’s a fine logo. It each time has been. But a effortless branding tie-in isn’t a important “feature.” The A510′s raw design is much supplementary relevant.

The A510 measures 0.42 inches thick and weighs 1.54 pounds — heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Asus Tranformer Prime and in mint condition iPad, but not by much. There’s a soft, rubberized coating across the back of the tablet. It has an appealing softness to it, and besides adds a crumb of grippiness — accept allowing for the tablet feels a crumb stocky.

Indeed, this tablet is likely to urge severe afterward a combine hours of continued employ if you had to stow it up by hand.
Unfortunately, the great screen didn’t impress me, despite its 1280×800 declaration. It’s an IPS put on view with the aim of offers solid off-axis viewing, but featuring in this age of Super AMOLED screens and Retina displays, it’s not a stunner by several wealth. And all visual content — the residence screen, apps, websites and photos snapped on the 5-megapixel rear camera — renders on the cool plane of the color Dell FK890 spectrum.

While I’m annoyed by competing screens with the aim of err in relation to over-saturation, the A510′s put on view is too pale on behalf of my tastes. And while, technically, the A510 has a high-definition screen (insomuch having the status of it ropes 720p), app icons look blurry leading close inspection. Text rendered on websites and all through the OS looks promptly, but the screen doesn’t happen close to wowing me.

THe A510 boasts 32GB of luggage compartment, a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 mainframe, and 1GB of RAM, which helps the tablet run quickly, by the side of smallest amount on the lock screen. However, drilling down into skin texture found featuring in the OS itself — an Acer-skinned version of machine 4, a.K.A. Ice Cream Sandwich — presents a several sory.

Acer’s nearly everyone obvious addition to ICS — and its biggest attempt by the side of competitive differentiation — is the increasingly familiar “Acer Ring,” a user interface element with the aim of pins recurrently used apps and content items on a touch-sensitive carousel.

Unlocking the tablet requires a swing at of a lockscreen ring. Swing at to the permission, and you’re featuring in, selection up wherever you survive gone inedible, whether on the residence screen or else featuring in an app. You can besides swing at to the gone to walk off straight to your netting browser, photo gallery, Google search or else the camera app.

A long time ago inside, you’ll unearth a pale olive ring icon by the side of the floor of the residence screen — tap it to bring up yet an extra ring. This in mint condition ring skin texture a volume slider, a fan array of icons on behalf of bookmarked webpages, and quick-launch controls on behalf of the photo gallery app, the netting browser, OS settings, and a screenshot tool.

The ring on the lockscreen reacts quickly. The ring summoned from the menu tablet — not so much. Its rolling animation launches gradually. Launching into apps and pathetic the fan of bookmarked webpages is more rapidly, but Acer’s in one piece ring experience feels like a required employ featuring in artifact differentiation.

Ice Cream Sandwich is Google’s breakthrough OS, and there’s really rebuff need to re-skin it if a manufacturer can add real rate and innovation. But the Acer Ring doesn’t provide this. As a substitute it only this minute offers an back up way to access elements with the aim of can already take place exposed on a smartly configured residence screen.

While the A510 offers competitive interior specs, its put on view isn’t no matter which special, and its Ring U.I. Is supplementary of an innocuous curiosity than a positive introduce Dell FK890. And the Olympic rings logo, while complete of history and import, is nothing supplementary than window dressing.

Again, we solitary spent a a small amount of hours with the A510, but nothing in relation to the experience told us this tablet is the 10.1-inch machine device to beat.