The Acer Iconia A110 has sort of arrived on the scene with barely an announcement. It was up for pre-order on Ebuyer for a while and then it just suddenly came into stock. A few weeks later and we have one here on our desk. Hailed by some as the device the Nexus 7 should have been and looking at the specs you can certainly see why. Although looking at the design not so much.
I am a bit concerned with the Iconia A110 as now and again something comes along for review and at every turn you want to compare it to another device. With the Iconia A110 it is no different and at every turn I want to compare it to the Nexus 7, which I don’t feel is fair. Especially as Google are selling them at cost. So here are our initial impressions starting with the good and bad points.
Good points
- Tegra 3 Quad Core CPU/GPU
- 1GB RAM
- MicroSD Slot
- HDMI Slot
- Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
- 7″ display
Bad points
- Only 8GB internal memory
- Slightly lower resolution than equivalents
- Slightly more expensive than equivalents
Design
This is the second 7″ tablet that Acer have released. The A100 was a Tegra 2 Honeycomb device that was great to use but not really a looker and judging by the look of the A110 it seems this trend is to continue.
The screen on the A110 looks narrow compared to other 7″ tablets I’ve used recently and it attracts fingerprints like there is no tomorrow. It also suffers under bright lights. Being a TFT screen means it isn’t as bright as competitors.
The branding on the front looks like it should be in portrait yet on the back it’s set for landscape. With 7″ tablets I always stick to portrait like a big phone.
The Iconia A110 is nice and light, although the square ish back panel doesn’t feel as nice in the hand as others.
Have a look at the pictures below of the Iconia.
Hardware
Here is the spec:
- Dimensions – 193mm x 126.5mm x 11.4 mm
- Weight – 390 g
- Display – TFT capacitive touchscreen, 600 x 1024 pixels, 7.0 inches (170 ppi pixel density)
- MicroSD slot up to 32 GB
- Internal Memory – 8 GB storage
- 1 GB RAM
- Camera 2 MP front facing Video 720p@30fps
- Nvidia Tegra 3 T30L CPU Quad-core 1.2 GHz
- GPS
- HDMI port
- Battery 3420 mAh)
The Tegra 3 processor and the 1GB of RAM really make the A110 fly. In use nothing phased it really, screen transitions and opening apps occured without the slightest of lag. Having a MicroSD slot and micro HDMI out really make the A110 versatile.
Software
Acer have barely touched the Jelly Bean experience at all, bar for a few apps and games. They have also enabled the standard launcher rotation for landscape so if you like using it in landscape then your sorted. As with the Nexus 7, you get a sort of phone/tablet hybrid version of Jelly Bean. I prefer it this way as some tablet apps look odd on a smaller screen.
Initial Conclusion
My initial conclusion is that the Iconia A110 is a great tablet which is up against massively stiff competition. Have limited storage space limits the number of huge Tegra 3 games like Bards Tale you can play, but having a MicroSD slot means you can load it up with films and music. So if you want a small tablet for media playback then this is probably going to be for you. If you want it for hardcore gaming then you are going to need to shuffle things about in the memory.
Over the next few weeks I will be testing out the A110 and we’ll bring the full review soon. If you want anything testing out then leave a comment below and I’ll see what I can do.