Today we’ll be taking a brief look at the Acer Iconia Tab A3. This is a most interesting tablet for a relatively low budget. Now, of course, stating that it’s not for the highest of budgets, you have to realize that it won’t necessarily offer you the same amount of features and the same performance as the other stronger and, inevitably, more expensive tablets out there.
The version of tablet that we chose to look at right now is the one that actually has network connections on them. There is also another version of the device that has only Wi-Fi support. Therefore, it’s sort of safe to assume that the Wi-Fi version of this tablet is somewhat cheaper than the 3G one ( also you don’t have to keep on paying for the service or internet, depending on the case ). Of course, this tablet in itself isn’t all that expensive – it’ll set you back around 300 dollars, to be honest ( but honestly, I’d say that you can find some for cheaper ).
I would like to apologize in advance that, at the moment in which I have created this review / preview, not a whole lot of info was available about this tablet, hence a few fields will remain more ambiguous than I would prefer.
SUMMARY
There are a few questions to be asked that I may be able to offer an answer to. First off – “Is the tablet any good?” – well I’d say that, while it’s not the BEST tablet out there, it still is sufficiently strong enough to withstand most tasks, and provided you have no problem whatsoever to with 10.1 inch tablets, you will undoubtedly have enough. Another good question would be “Is it worth its price?”. While that may be a good question in itself, I’d say it is too subjective to answer – some people may fall in love with a feature or another, while others may consider it on a larger scale – personally I don’t really think it’s worth such a high price and you should maybe wait for a better deal on it. The Acer Iconia Tab A3 is an over-all quite good tablet, but it has a few downfalls that can be felt here and there and will overall damage its performance ( in some cases, they may even justify lowering the price ).
GENERAL
As I’ve mentioned, this is a 3G-enabled tablet, so it can use GSM networks ( your standard 2G and 3G games ). Unfortunately, it isn’t officially out, having been announced in September and said to come out somewhere around October. We’ll see what’s what when it officially hits the market.
BODY
Unfortunately, this is one of those sections for which I can’t provide you with a lot of information. All I can really say is that the device looks quite good and it shouldn’t really be bigger than your average 10.1 Tablet ( I’d give you specifics, but if I go wrong with a few millimeters, the whole internet might jump the gun on me ).
DISPLAY
The screen of the Acer Iconia Tab A3 is an LED-backlit IPS LCD capacitive one with 16 million colors. The size and resolution are quite good, especially for its price range, being stopped at around 10.1 inches and 800 x 1280 pixels respectively. What disappoints me about this screen is its pixel density, which leads me to believe that it won’t feel as natural as it should. Maybe I’m just being a judgmental prick in assuming that circa 149 pixels per inch are too few, but logic would dictate that such a low ppi on such a large screen will undoubtedly make the difference feel palable.
SOUND
While there’s nothing to be observed on the hardware side of the Audio part, there is something out of the ordinary to be noticed on the software-side of things. The Acer Iconia Tab A3 seems to have a very potent audio enhancements on it: Dolby Digital Plus, to be precise. That should make for a pretty good experience in listening to music or watching movies.
MEMORY
There are two versions of this tablet as far as memory is concerned. These versions are a 16 GB storage one and a 32 GB storage one. If you fear that you’ll run out of space on either of them, I’m here to lay your fears to rest by telling you that both can be expanded upon with a MicroSD card of up to 32 GB.
DATA CONNECTION
The Acer Iconia Tab A3, having support for GSM networks, is naturally equipped with both GPRS and EDGE, both having the standard-issue speed. The WLAN of this device is Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. The Acer Iconia Tab A3 is known to come with Bluetooth v4.0 on it and it also has a MicroUSB v2.0 port as well ( no word yet whether or not it will support MHL ).
CAMERA
The main camera of this device is 5 MP one, but again, not much info can be said about it. There’s little to know info whatsoever right now whether it can record in HD, but we do know that it has Geo-Tagging and can photograph in resolutions of around 2592 x 1944 pixels ( although I personally don’t encourage tablet photographing as it looks ridiculous – it’s somewhat acceptable on 7.0 inch tablets, but on 10.1 inch tablets it kind of looks wrong ).
BATTERY
All that can be said about the battery of this device is that it is Non-Removable and can allegedly maintain the tablet alive for up to 11 hours of multimedia usage. Whether or not this is true, it remains to be seen.
HARDWARE
Little is known about the hardware of the Acer Iconia Tab A3, but what can be said for sure is that it can withstand a bit of pressure and hard-usage. This device has a Quad-Core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 processor on it, so it’s safe to assume that all apps and games from now or from the nearby future can run smooth on this device.
SOFTWARE
Regarding the software of the Acer Iconia Tab A3, you’ll find the exact same version that seems to be found on most Android devices nowadays – Android OS v4.2 Jelly Bean. Unfortunately I can’t say whether or not it will be upgradeable to other version or whether it can support them officially ( because you know, it CAN support the unofficially, but it’s unwise to install unofficial version, especially if you’re a newbie with Android devices ).
FEATURES
While it may not be the strongest tablet out there, the Acer Iconia Tab A3 still has a few features on it that manage to justify part of its somewhat large price. Firstly, the sensors: we’ve got an Accelerometer and a Compass. Messaging on this device can be done even through SMS ( with Threaded View ) and MMS, or the standard E-Mail, Push Mail and IM. This tab also has HTML5 used in the browser and Java through Java MIDP emulation. The GPS of this device seems to have full support for A-GPS. The Acer Iconia Tab A3 is available in two colors: Black and Silver ( both of which are absolutely beautiful ).
Here’s a brief list of what the Acer Iconia Tab A3 is capable of:
- SNS integration
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail
- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player
- MP4/H.264/H.263 player
- Organizer
- Document viewer
- Photo viewer/editor
- Predictive text input
This is the end of this little review / preview of the Acer Iconia Tab A3. I’m sorry I couldn’t provide you with MORE useful information or that I have been unclear on certain details about it. We do what we can with what we’ve got and may the flow of time reveal more to us about this device.
