Acer Iconia A 500

A tablet that supports Flash out of the Box, lets you expand storage, and is cheaper than the iPad

The first thing that hits you when you look at the Acer Iconia A 500 is its stylish brushed aluminium casing, reminiscent of the iPad but very differently designed. Moving on, you see a 5 megapixel camera (with a flash) at the back, and a 2 megapixel camera at the front. But then, megapixels don’t count on a tablet as long as you are able to take usable pictures fast enough—after all, will you want to carry a 10" screen-sized tablet on a holiday to make home videos?

The Iconia tablet is very slim and nice to hold, but the moment you start comparing it to Apple’s iPad2, which is lighter and thinner, the bulk seems to make itself felt.

A winning point that the Iconia has over the iPad is that it comes with a stereo speaker and the sound is richer while playing games. Dolby Magic gives the speakers an extra boost, but for immersive sound you will still need to plug in a headphone.

The display is bright enough to enjoy both web browsing and multimedia content consumption, but the screen is prone to fingerprint smudges. Its dual core 1GHz processor and Honeycomb (Android 3.0) make this tablet work very fast, and compared to its closest rival, the Motorola Xoom, it comes at nearly half the price. With an internal storage of 16 GB, expandable to 32 GB by using a micro SD card, the Iconia offers expandability that the iPad lacks. Also included is an HDMI (mini) port to connect the tablet to your television and mirror the display. The current available model has wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, a MicroUSB v2.0 port, and weighs 730 gm. The Iconia also supports DivX and XviD formats.

If you are looking for a tablet that supports Flash out of the Box, lets you expand storage, and maybe costs a little less than the iPad, the Iconia fits the bill. But I will still stick to the iPad2 for my tablet computing and multimedia needs.

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