Well it has been a few months and I have really come to enjoy my Acer Iconia a200 tablet. The picture quality is fantastic and the performance is great. Graphics intensive games run quickly and look great. A perfect example of this is the massive new A Bards Tale (which btw way is a great game for all you RPG fans out there). The game textures look about on par with a high end computer circa 2004. So I like to get right to the point with my reviews. So lets get to it. First lets start off with what is wrong with this tablet.
The Bad
The volume controls are shit. The rocker button is small and hard to operate. It feels solid and quality, but just a little too solid. If it was a wee bit bigger it would be much better.
Power save mode is a blessing and a curse. When your tablet is idle the WiFi will shut off. This is a good measure to save battery life and I am all for that, but when downloading very large files it is nice to be able to do so with the screen off. This "feature" can also be annoying when bringing the tablet out of sleep mode as it will often resume the app you were in and then interrupt said app with a flood of new email alerts and whatnot.
The Good
FULL SIZE USB. Yea. That's right I said full size USB. You can plug all sorts of goodies into this. USB hub, keyboard/mouse combo, even an external hard drive! This tablet pushes the boundaries from standard android tablet to decent netbook replacement with the proper case and keyboard mouse combo.
Micro-SD Card Slot. Use this to expand the 16GB of hard drive space to whatever you darn well please.
Easy root*! I used THIS method to root the tablet. Follow the steps to the letter and you will be just fine! Took me about an hour to get this all set. Many thanks to the great folks over at http://www.acertabletforum.com. *FYI - After rooting my tablet the newest version of Hulu stopped working. It seems to be the only application affected by the root process. I was able to find a version of Hulu (read hacked) that worked, but it doesn't seem to be very high quality. But hey it works.
Couple final thoughts. Tablet cases are shit and so are the styluses. Both are very expensive and in the case of the styluses...garbage. I did manage to find a decent case for it. The Case Logic iPad/ 10" Tablet case works great as it can hold the tablet in an upright position. Only one caveat...the little bungee cord in the upper left hand corner will occasionally press the power button and shut off the screen or sometimes even the tablet. I opt to just unhook it.
See below for links to this tablet and case! Thanks for stopping by! :D
