If you think that you'll never find a suitable 10-inch tablet with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for work or for play, think again. The fact is, there are several such devices available on the market today. However, none are quite like the Acer Iconia Tab A510, which manages to trump the competition with its superb mobile processing power and superior battery life. You can call this tablet many things, but it is definitely not weak or under-powered. Actually, it is one of the more reliably powerful tablets that you can get in its price range. And on top of that, it even looks good.
What makes the Acer Iconia Tab A510 a force to be reckoned with? For one thing, it packs a 1.3GHz quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 System-on-a-Chip which comes with a 12-core graphics chip under the hood. That pretty much makes it capable of running any Android game you can throw at it. If they came out with a game called Angry Birds: Supernova and you had to play it by throwing cute yet disgruntled parakeets into swirling black holes in the middle of empty space to destroy pig fortresses made out of tiny galaxies, the A510 would run it. Science fiction aside, you really can do a lot of stuff with this tablet, ranging from watching HD movies on its 10.1-inch 1280x800 touchscreen LCD, playing music through its built-in loudspeakers with the aid of Dolby Mobile sound technology, browsing the Internet wirelessly through Wi-Fi (optional 3G connectivity), or any one of a hundred other things with the use of aftermarket software applications that can be downloaded through the Google Play store.
The A510 packs so much serious figurative muscle that Acer saw it fit to release it in a special Olympic Edition version to commemorate the 2012 London Olympics. Its other features include dual cameras, with the main one having a 5-megapixel sensor at the back, built-in Bluetooth and GPS, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage, support for up to 32GB microSD cards, microHDMI output, and microUSB connectivity. Speaking of the microUSB feature, it works in a somewhat crippled configuration because you can only use it for charging with the accompanying wall charger. Charging via USB only works when the device is in sleep mode. And even then, it’s going to take needlessly long to finish charging. Evidently, Acer meant for the built-in microUSB port to be used only for data. No one really knows why they did this.
The bottom line is, you’ll definitely get plenty of bang for your buck with this tablet. Some people contend that Acer may be asking for too much with this particular device in terms of price. This is where it might be worth remembering an old saying: you get what you pay for.
Need to Know: Acer Iconia Tab A510
1. Powerful innards and sleek-looking outward appearance. (The Good)
2. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich comes pre-installed as standard. (The Good)
3. Overall a bit too thick and too heavy for extended use. (The Bad)
4. USB port is non-standard and charging only works via the included wall charger. (The Bad)
What the Critics Are Saying...
- Trevor Sheridan, AppleNAppsShapes Music is worth picking up for a brand new music experience on the iPad, which is made for everyone to pick up and play. We just wish there was more to extend the ideas at work.
- James Pearce, CoolsmartphoneThe Iconia is a great tablet that you can mould to your own requirements, be it travelling, multimedia, productivity or gaming. The problem is that most Android tablets now lag behind something or other, mostly the Nexus range, the Google pricing model has really shook up the tablet market and manuf...
- Damian McFerren , Know Your MobileArguably the biggest selling point of the A510 - apart from its appealing but now outdated Olympic connection - is its Tegra 3 chipset. This allows it to offer world-beating performance when it comes to watching HD video, playing 3D games and surfing the web. However, all the technological potency i...
- Damien McFerran, Know Your MobileArguably the biggest selling point of the A510 - apart from its appealing but now outdated Olympic connection - is its Tegra 3 chipset. This allows it to offer world-beating performance when it comes to watching HD video, playing 3D games and surfing the web. However, all the technological potency...
- Ross Catanzarit, Tech AdvisorThe Acer Iconia Tab A510 Olympic Edition won't be winning any Gold medals in our tablets chart. Its battery life is strong, and up there with the iPad, but once the games have finished there's little else here for us to recommend it over other high-end slates.
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