The last time it leaked a lot of information about a new tablet from Acer with a Tegra 3 chip and a full hd screen. Tweakers.net was in Las Vegas at the CES trade show, the chance to all with this new tablet to play.
At the end of his press conference showed Acer short a new Iconia tablet. It seemed briefly that it remained, but fortunately there was after the press conference time, under the watchful eye of an Acer employee, hands-on. As always at a trade show, it was quite a struggle to get the tablet in and get your hands on, but eventually we were able to ten minutes to play. Although Acer do not have a name published, it is almost sure that the tablet is the type number A700 inherits.
The appearance was no surprise, because pictures licked recently. Compared to the A500 is Acer what appearance relates to a new path. The A700 is made of dark plastic and has at the rear a rough structure. On the back is in the middle a camera with flash is placed. The bezel is pretty small and he feels strong. We didn’t have a scale or ruler with us, so exact figures we have not, but in terms of thickness and weight seems to be Acers latest tablet is certainly an improvement compared to the A500. Just like the A500 has the A700 has a micro-sd reader, a micro-usb connector and a micro-hdmi output. Because of its reduced thickness, there is a usb port that the A500 still had no place.
After Asus recently the striker bite, it seems CES the moment when more manufacturers are tablets with the new Tegra 3 soc from Nvidia are going to show. Also, the A700 uses this quadcore chip and that means that Android is a much smoother running than on tablets of the previous generation. In addition, the performance in the area of video to be improved and that showed Acer by several movie trailers in 1080p to run. Now could the Tegra 2 that also, but had to when encoding special settings used, that the quality is not that good came.
While poking around in the various menus, we came across a few innovations. So there is an option for Acer Print to find, it seems that the lockscreen can be customized and we also saw a option to have the Acer Ring to activate. After we were done, there appeared an icon in the system tray that the Ring menu can be called. From that menu, get fast access to bookmarks and a few shortcuts. Something similar we saw, as a look at the W500 tablet, but the version on the A700 turned was clearly not finished yet, because it all went far from smoothly. Also the benefit we see is not in, with icons and widgets on the homescreen, you can, in fact, the same. The test sample turned, incidentally, version 4.0.1 of Android, while 4.0.3 is already out. On softwarevlak is so easy to make profit.
That the A700, a Tegra 3-soc is a good thing, too, because the tablet needs a lot more pixels to view. Where the A500 is still a resolution of 1280×800 pixels, is that the A700 is able to 1920×1200. Acer calls it, strangely enough, to 1080p, which it really is 120 pixels. It is probably chosen for this because 1080p well once a well established concept. However, the resolution is impressive. When navigating through the interface includes the extra pixels not directly on, but when watching videos, the higher resolution clearly visible.
Resolution is not all; for the A500 were, for example, we do not adore about the used va panels. Fortunately, Acer also here made the right choices, because the A700 features an ips panel with impressive viewing angles. Even more striking is however the manner in which that panel in the housing; the space between the panel and the covering glass plate is reduced to a minimum. This has the pleasant consequence that the screen is less reflection than we are used to from tablets.
We have as said not long with the A700 can play it, but the first impression is good. Compared with the A500 seems Acer be a big step, especially in terms of image quality. An official introduction, however, this was not yet, and we expect that at the end of next month will come at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Hopefully we will be there to hear what the A700 will cost and when he is in the shops.