Acer Iconia Tab A501 Review

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Overall, we are quite pleased with the Acer Iconia Tab A501 specs. Acer has managed to input some of the latest technology inside the Acer Iconia A501, and it shows in our Acer Iconia A501 review unit, making it one of the high end Android tablets available on the market to date.

Acer Iconia Tab - Design & Build:

We have the Acer Iconia A501 review unit on our hands and to be frank, at first we think that the Iconia Tab is a plain-looking Android tablet. But all of that soon to change as we play around with the Acer Iconia A501. The Android honeycomb tablet has a very sturdy body, and you can find the backside of our Acer Iconia Tab review unit wrapped in aluminum. The curvey backside of the Acer Iconia A501 add some comfort when we hold them. On the side of our Acer Iconia A501 review unit there are ports, including HDMI-out, USB, and headphone jack. MicroSD slot can be found at the top.

Although we love how well built the Acer Iconia A501 is, there are some cons. We are not a fan of the cover of the MicroSD card slot that feels like a weird plastic piece, and also the buttons for volume, screen orientation lock and also power is too small. Moreover, compared to other Android tablets, the Acer Iconia A501 is one of the heaviest with 730g. Hence, I’m not so sure I’d like to take the Acer Iconia A501 all day long.

Acer Iconia Tab - Display Screen:

We have told you in the Acer Iconia A501 specs section that the Iconia A501 has a 10.1 inch display screen with 1280×800 resolution. When it comes to display review, Acer Iconia A501 looks quite promising on the paper, but how does the Acer Iconia A501 display perform?

As expected, our Acer Iconia A501 display unit gave a great responsiveness. Indoor viewing is obviously great, and users will be presented with crisp text and vibrant colors. That being said, outdoor viewing is not so great when we’re trying to see the display of our Acer Iconia A501 review unit under the sun. And although it’s not something annoying, the viewing angles is also not so great.

Acer Iconia Tab - OS:

As you might have known, the Acer Iconia A501 is running on Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which was introduced as the first version of Android OS for tablets. Currently our Acer Iconia A501 review unit is using the vanilla version of the Android Honeycomb OS, with a little bit of modifications. Acer Iconia A501 has several hubs that include eReading, Multimedia, Game Zone and Social hubs.

Being the first Android OS for tablets, the Android honeycomb is really different compared to the Android OS made for smartphones. The most noticeable difference between Android Honeycomb vs Gingerbread or Froyo is the revamped interface that focuses and utilizes the large screen of an Android Tablet.

Basically, the new UI that Android Honeycomb brings five customizable home screens, better on screen keyboard, new browser, better copy and paste, and the action bar. We have given you the Android Honeycomb review, so we encourage you to read the review if you want to learn more about the Acer Iconia A501 OS review.

Overall, the Acer Iconia review unit we have runs relatively smooth, but since the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS is practically a new OS, there are a few glitches. Hopefully it will change in the future Acer Iconia A501 OS update.

Acer Iconia Tab - Processor & Memory:

Inside, the Acer Iconia A501 review unit we have comes with a 1GHz of NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor. This processor is a popular processor that is used in many Android tablets, including Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v and also the Motorola XOOM. In addition, the Acer Iconia A501 also comes with 1GB of RAM, which ensures that everything works smoothly.

Regarding the storage capacity, our ACER Iconia A501 review unit uses 16GB of internal storage. There’s also the Acer Iconia A501 32GB version available on the market, but that’s not our Acer Iconia A501 review unit here.

Both Acer Iconia A501 16GB and 32Gb comes with an expandable memory card slot that support MicroSD Card up to 32GB. Hence, you can store up to 48GB or 64GB in this Android tablet. The Acer Iconia A501 review unit we have didn’t come with a preinstalled file manager, which was a bit disappointing. However,there are actually a lot of third party apps from the Android market that can cover this.

Acer Iconia Tab - Camera & Video:

As we have told you earlier, there are two camera in this Acer Iconia A501. The main camera is at the back with a 5 megapixel camera while the secondary camera is available at the front with a 2 megapixel resolution.

When we are comparing the Acer Iconia A501 vs iPad 2 camera quality, the winner is clearly the Acer Iconia A501 tablet. Both Acer Iconia A501 camera presented a better still pictures compared to those resulted from Apple iPad 2. However, when we are comparing the Acer Iconia A501 vs Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 –another popular Android tablet-; the quality of video and pictures from the camera of our Acer Iconia A501 review unit falls short. Moreover, our Acer Iconia A501 review unit lacks the support for HD video recording. What a shame.

That being said, when it comes to presentation we are quite pleased with Acer Iconia A501. The Acer Iconia A501 comes with HD video playback and also HDMI-out port. Other interesting feature is the standard USB port.

Acer Iconia Tab - Battery Life:

On the spec sheet, Acer said that their Acer Iconia A501 battery life will stand for up to 10 hours. With moderate use, the battery life could last for over two days. However, during our testing we are using our Acer Iconia A501 review unit to watch video and music, playing games, and also some web browsing and the our Acer Iconia A501 review unit’s battery could only stand up for about 7 hours.

Acer Iconia Tab A501 Specs & Price >