Acer Iconia Tab 10 review

An affordable Android tablet that cuts a few too many corners

Acer may not be the first device manufacturer you think of when it comes to Android tablets.

However, the firm has been rolling out a steady stream of affordable Iconia tablets for the past few years powered by Google's Android operating system.

The Iconia Tab 10 continues this legacy, and is aimed at the bottom end of the tablet market with prices starting at £180.

Design
Visually the Acer Iconia Tab 10 is fairly unassuming. Featuring a white polycarbonate front and fake metal finish plastic back, the Iconia Tab 100 looks distinctly like a cheap iPad 2.

Beyond the front and back Acer branding, the tablet could easily be confused for any one of the other nondescript low-end Android tablets currently flooding the market.

The Iconia Tab 10 design isn't anything to write home about, but it does tick all the boxes when it comes to functionality.

Measuring 256x171x8.9mm and weighing 520g the Iconia Tab 10 is fairly travel friendly and easily fits into most satchels and handbags. The device is also big enough for general productivity and media consumption purposes.

Thanks to its use of metal the Iconia Tab 10's travel friendly nature is backed up with fairly solid build quality.

We found that, while slightly prone to picking up dirt marks, the Iconia Tab 10 is fairly robust and is more than capable of surviving the odd bump and scrape.

It's also reasonably well stocked when it comes to ports with a microUSB, microSD and HDMI input.

Our only qualm with the design is the slightly odd button placement. The volume button is placed on the top long side, while the power button sits at the top of the left hand short side.

This is far from a deal breaker, but using the Iconia Tab 10 in landscape and portrait mode feels slightly odd and we'd have preferred both controls on one side.

Display
Screen quality is always one of the first areas cut by most companies when designing affordable devices. This remains true for the Iconia Tab 10, and the 10.1in, 1280x800, WXGA, LED touchscreen is one of its worst features.

The resolution is woefully low, and colours universally look washed out. This is particularly true of reds, which regularly appeared closer to pink.

Whites and blacks were not great either and in general the Iconia Tab 10's screen proved incapable of displaying deep colours.

Brightness levels were average and viewing angles were noticeably shorter than on most other tablets at this price, such as the Hudl 2.

Operating system and software
Tech manufacturers' insistence on adding custom skins to their devices mean that Android updates are always a slow affair.

This is because the skin's custom code needs to be tweaked to work with updates from Google, a practice that can take weeks if not months.

As a result, in the past we've forgiven devices for not always running the latest version of Android in the first few months following an update's launch.

This remains true with the recent of release of Android 5.0 Lollipop and makes it understandable, while a little disappointing, if an affordable device is released still running Android 4.4.4 KitKat.

Next: Operating system continued, performance, camera, battery, storage and conclusion

Acer Iconia Tab 10 review

An affordable Android tablet that cuts a few too many corners

However, we are still disappointed to see that the Iconia Tab 10 is not even running the latest version of KitKat and instead comes with Android 4.4.2 KitKat.

The delay is likely to be down to the additions and changes Acer has made to Android on the Iconia Tab 10. Most of the changes are fairly useless and amount to little more than unwanted and needed, uninstallable applications, such as the Acer Store.

Some, however, are reasonably useful, like Acer's Touch WakeApp, a useful feature that lets you wake the Iconia Tab 10 from sleep mode with a variety of five finger or 'two thumb' gestures.

Performance
The Iconia Tab 10 is powered by a quad-core 1.3GHz, MediaTek MT8127 processor and features 1GB RAM.

The specs aren't anything to write home about but are to be expected considering the price.

The middling specifications performed as you would expect and the tablet got 363 single-core and 1200 multi-core scores on Geekbench and 22465 on Antutu. This puts the Iconia Tab 10 behind most recent Android tablets.

The tablet is fast enough for basic web browsing, media consumption and document editing, but it doesn't always deal well with demanding tasks, such as 3D gaming.

For example, playing Grand Theft Auto III the tablet would at times chug and stutter.

Camera
Acer has loaded the Iconia Tab 10 with barebones 5MP rear and 2MP front cameras. Testing the rear camera, we found that results were not great.

Images generally come out noisy, even in regular light, and feature dull colour balance and contrast levels. We also noticed it could sometimes distort images in strange ways.

Being fair to Acer we've yet to find a tablet we like taking pictures on, but the Iconia Tab 10's rear camera is still below average when it comes to picture quality.

Taken on the Acer Iconia A3-A20

The secondary 2MP front camera was similarly bad at taking photos, but was more than good enough for basic video calling.

Battery and storage
The Iconia Tab 10 has a non-removable 5700 mAh Li-Polymer battery and performed reasonably well in our battery burn tests.

Testing the battery by constantly looping a video file stored on the tablet, the Iconia Tab 10 discharged between 12 to 14 percent per hour and usually lasted nine hours before dying. This is fairly average by tablet standards.

The burn score rang true with real-world testing and, in general, we got two to three days out of the tablet with moderate use.

Moderate use entailed sporadically checking our email and social media feeds, browsing the internet, playing the odd game, instant messaging co-workers and friends on Skype and watching the odd TV episode on Netflix.

The tablet comes with 32GB of internal storage, although a further 128GB can be added using the microSD slot.

Overall
The Iconia Tab 10 is a fairly unimaginative budget Android tablet that is noticeably light on innovation and features.

The device has an unassuming design and offers slightly below average camera and processor performance compared with most other Android tablets.

However, when you consider the £180 price tag this is to be expected. The Iconia Tab 10 offers a stable way to access the internet and mount basic productivity tasks, making it a solid, if dull, choice for buyers on a budget looking for a 10in tablet.