Expert Review

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 comes with Android 3.2 Honeycomb preinstalled. The 7 inch screen, 401 lightweight built is one reason that it is often compared to the Blackberry Playbook.

There are a number of options for connections with the tab including the HDMI port, microUSB, a pair of speaker grilles and a  slim docking port occupy one end and on the other end there is the power button and a headphone port. In case you’re wondering about a port of SD cards it is available under a plastic flap on the top.

The dark screen is a good way to disguise icky fingerprint marks all over the screens (I hate these). Although the screen is quite visible when in use it is almost impossible to see it well at a vertical angle.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 comes with a built it camera (5 MP) that is fairly decent in its reproduction of images but finding your way around the gallery is a challenge. A Nemo player is employed to manage your video and music playbacks and for viewing of your photos taken with the tab and those imported from an SD card. Although it’s not high tech it is a good match for the screen dimensions of the tab.

If you’re not happy with it you can always opt for a different multimedia app which will enable e-reading, games, social networking, music and video play backs and more on separate screens. Additionally you can use Acer Clear-fi – Acer’s bespoke media manager for accessing content over your home Wi-Fi network. So many options so little time.

If your picture quality means anything to you then you will be happy to learn that pulling your photos in the Acer Clear-fi menu is a complete dream since the images are almost always perfectly reproduced with good levels of zoom. Even though the tablet won’t rotate the images automatically a simple twist and tap here and there with your fingers will change the pictures to the angles that you need. On another high note the photo gallery will be available in the Clear.fi live photo gallery and you can still scroll through the Android Honeycomb tiles of currently active apps.

Some other impressive features of the Acer Iconia Tab A100 include the ease of text entries brought about by the inclusion of symbols that are commonly used on the right of the standard Qwerty key layout. This means that you won’t have to constantly switch between numbers and letters.  The battery life is better than average and there were no issues with freezing and crashing (which is a very common complaint with Android). Another feature I appreciate is the ability to monitor the apps that are hogging the battery power and manually quit them if not in use. Really, the tablet will run for almost five hours before charging is required. This is provided that you do not use it for videos, with video use the battery will run down a lot faster.

To wrap up I have to mention that the GPS module is absolutely amazing. With the help of Google Maps you can find anywhere you want to go quite easily and you can zoom in and see exactly where you need to go.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 sells for $349 on Amazon.