Acer Iconia A500 - Honeycomb on a Budget
by Vivek Gowri & Jarred Walton on June 24, 2011 4:00 AM ESTCamera Performance
Using the rear facing camera on a tablet has always been an iffy proposition to me, and the Iconia is no different. From an ergonomic standpoint, it’s all wrong. Literally, all wrong. Doesn’t matter which device you’re holding - iPad, Xoom, Galaxy Tab, Transformer, anything. You just look and feel really weird holding up a 10” piece of glass and metal. I got so many weird looks from passersby as I was taking the photo and video samples. But manufacturers are putting cameras on tablets, so we’ll evaluate them.
The camera app is just the default Honeycomb one, which we’ve looked at before. It’s a well designed app, with all of the core options laid out in a circle just under the right thumb, and a prominent capture button in the center.
Image quality, unfortunately, is not so hot. Images look alright compressed to web resolution, but viewed 1:1, they’re relatively noisy. You get more detail than the Transformer’s camera, and images end up less washed out, but overall picture quality is a bit worse than the Xoom and trails the Galaxy Tab 10.1” by a decent margin. I’m not sure how much it matters though - smartphone cameras get used a ton, tablet cameras really don’t. I’ve had a number of tablets over the last 9 months or so, and beyond camera samples for reviews, I don’t think I’ve ever used the rear facing camera on any of them.
The front facing camera here is decent, though it suffers in low light conditions as in the sample image I took.
720p video is recorded at 30fps using the AVC video codec with 96kbps single channel AAC audio. Honestly, the end result isn’t too great, with the video exhibiting some ghosting and generally lacking the fluidity that we tend to expect from higher end smartphones these days. It’ll do in a pinch, but don’t expect great videos out of the Iconia regardless of the HD resolution.
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theyard - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Agree...but even Acer can't seem to figure that out. Saw this post on their mktg genius http://diglr.tumblr.com/kmmatney - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Agreed - Tablets are, for the most part, a luxury item. You buy them to quick browse the web, check email etc, while sitting on the couch or in bed. Exactly the things I'm doings with my phone, but with a much bigger screen. I was holding off buying one until iPad2 came out, but it looks like iPad3 is close enough to wait for - this is a luxury item for me - I can wait.bplewis24 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Exactly.A common misconception regarding Android is that you need to constantly kill tasks running in the background.
I think it was actually pointed out here in a review that the underlying linux kernel manages memory and tasks on it's own and does not require the OS to do it itself. But consumers and reviewers alike often think that they have to kill background tasks as if they are running in full and eating up all of their RAM.
ViLB - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Great comment and you beat me to the punch. Its annoying to no end to read people complain that there isn't a dedicated task killer on android when they don't understand how Android works. Reading that in a Anandtech review is a bit of a letdown.ViLB - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I test drove the A500 and didn't like it because of the build quality for many of the reasons stated here. I disagree with the usefulness of tablets thoughts or the lack thereof in the review. I'm a graphic artist and I've found my Xoom to be invaluable for creating quick sketches and some finished renders using Autodesks Sketchbook Mobile. Being able tto output psd files, jpegs, create layers etc is a godsend. I've been able to create small animations with my Xoom as well using Movie studio. Add this to the movie/music/reading/gaming functions, USB and Bluetooth m/KB support, apps like Documents to Go, ezPDFreader, Adobe PDF creator etc and there are tasks I perform on my tablet before I touch my laptop. Of course tablets arent a replacement for laptops and notebooks and won't be for a few years at least but depending on the user and their needs, tablets can be very important to workflow.To suggest, as a commentor has, that tablets are only good for document reading is ignorant at best.
coolhardware - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Dear Anand et al., could you guys start doing some additional video playback tests on the Android tablets and phones? Similar to the lists here about high-res MKV capabilities of various devices:http://www.jdhodges.com/2011/06/can-android-do-108...
I think a lot of readers enjoy "alternative" video/container formats like MKV etc and it is nice to know which devices are capable of playing what... I would love to see your thorough review techniques applied to a topic like that! Thx.
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
It looks warmer to me. A lot warmer.VivekGowri - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Hmm, it yellows out at angle, but you may be right. Let me rerun the numbers and get back to you, but the difference isn't nearly as big as that picture would suggest - that was more to show the difference in viewing angle and how early discolouration starts in the Acer vs the IPS displays.crispbp04 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
i am anxious to see what your thoughts are on the windows based iconia tab.While you're at it, get your hands on an MSI Windpad 110W and compare the two generations of brazos!
VivekGowri - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
I've been running Android basically since the EVO came out last year, I know how it works. Just because I don't technically need to manage memory doesn't mean I don't want to manage the apps I have running in the background. It's a control thing, I think. There's a reason why ATK and other app killers are so popular on the Android Market...I know it's not a task manager, it's just that it really easily could be. It literally has everything it needs to be a task manager, except for the kill task button.