Acer Iconia Tab A510
Key specs
Critic consensus
“The Acer Iconia Tab A510 Olympic Edition won't be winning any Gold medals in our tablets chart. Its battery life is strong, and up there with the iPad, but once the games have finished there's little else here for us to recommend it over other high-end slates.”
“After spending several days using the A510 full-time, I can honestly say that it offers one of the best tablet experiences that I've ever had. It's fast, fluid, feels great, has good battery life, and Acer didn't overload it with custom crapware. The speakers and camera may be shoddy, but neither of those things are the primary reason that anyone buys a tablet. If you're otherwise looking for a premium tablet experience without the premium price, then the A510 can easily give you that.”
“The Acer Iconia Tab A510 is a bit dull. It’s (comparatively) heavy, and thick, and isn’t as comfortable to grip as other tablets. The cameras are mediocre (as expected), and the speakers don’t exactly leave much to write home about. There’s nothing wrong here besides the cameras — the build quality is generally very sturdy, it does everything a tablet is supposed to do, and includes Nvidia’s Tegra. But an extra $50 will get you an Asus Transformer Prime, a device that hits all the same notes in a nicer shell (and then there’s the optional $150 keyboard dock). There's also the matter of the $399 iPad 2, whose latest incarnation received a boost to battery life. And if you're not averse to rumors, at CES in January we caught a glimpse of an Acer tablet packing a 1080p display. All told, the A510 is by no means a bad device. But at this stage in Android’s development, “adequate” simply isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
“Eh, it's a pretty good tablet, but at $450, it's not good enough. Acer put a great processor in here, but the screen is extremely underwhelming. And the bulk just makes it feel older than it is. Bring it down to $300 or $350, and yeah, it'd be a pretty good buy, but you can get the Transformer Prime for just $50 more. It's worth the difference.”
Watch before you decide
In Depth
If you think that you’ll never find a suitable 10-inch tablet with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich for work or for play, think again. The fact is, there are several such devices available on the market today. However, none are quite like the Acer Iconia Tab A510, which manages to trump the competition with its superb mobile processing power and superior battery life. You can call this tablet many things, but it is definitely not weak or under-powered. Actually, it is one of the more reliably powerful tablets that you can get in its price range. And on top of that, it even looks good.
What makes the Acer Iconia Tab A510 a force to be reckoned with? For one thing, it packs a 1.3GHz quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 System-on-a-Chip which comes with a 12-core graphics chip under the hood. That pretty much makes it capable of running any Android game you can throw at it. If they came out with a game called Angry Birds: Supernova and you had to play it by throwing cute yet disgruntled parakeets into swirling black holes in the middle of empty space to destroy pig fortresses made out of tiny galaxies, the A510 would run it. Science fiction aside, you really can do a lot of stuff with this tablet, ranging from watching HD movies on its 10.1-inch 1280×800 touchscreen LCD, playing music through its built-in loudspeakers with the aid of Dolby Mobile sound technology, browsing the Internet wirelessly through Wi-Fi (optional 3G connectivity), or any one of a hundred other things with the use of aftermarket software applications that can be downloaded through the Google Play store.
The A510 packs so much serious figurative muscle that Acer saw it fit to release it in a special Olympic Edition version to commemorate the 2012 London Olympics. Its other features include dual cameras, with the main one having a 5-megapixel sensor at the back, built-in Bluetooth and GPS, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of onboard storage, support for up to 32GB microSD cards, microHDMI output, and microUSB connectivity. Speaking of the microUSB feature, it works in a somewhat crippled configuration because you can only use it for charging with the accompanying wall charger. Charging via USB only works when the device is in sleep mode. And even then, it’s going to take needlessly long to finish charging. Evidently, Acer meant for the built-in microUSB port to be used only for data. No one really knows why they did this.
The bottom line is, you’ll definitely get plenty of bang for your buck with this tablet. Some people contend that Acer may be asking for too much with this particular device in terms of price. This is where it might be worth remembering an old saying: you get what you pay for.
Need to Know: Acer Iconia Tab A510
1. Powerful innards and sleek-looking outward appearance. (The Good)
2. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich comes pre-installed as standard. (The Good)
3. Overall a bit too thick and too heavy for extended use. (The Bad)
4. USB port is non-standard and charging only works via the included wall charger. (The Bad)
What people actually want to know
When was the Acer Iconia Tab A510 released?
The Acer Iconia Tab A510 was released on April 6, 2012.
How long does the battery last on the Acer Iconia Tab A510?
The Acer Iconia Tab A510 has a 9,800 mAh battery.
Does the Acer Iconia Tab A510 have a headphone jack?
Yes, the Acer Iconia Tab A510 has a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Where can I download the Acer Iconia Tab A510 manual?
You can view and download the Acer Iconia Tab A510 manual on our dedicated manual page.
Questions & answers
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