It's the best bang for the buck hardware wise but it doesn't come close to the quality of the much older Acer A500 i'm replacing. The biggest problem is Google's fault, starting with KitKat you can't write to the SD card any more. The whole point of removable storage is to share files between devices. Supposedly Google restored that functionality in Lollipop but many months later and Acer hasn't released an update yet, they haven't even said if they are going to release an update. Acer did a decent job updating the A500, I hope they do the same with the A3. Another disapointment was that the older A500 had a full sized USB port which was great with the really small SanDisk thumb drives, again, it's hard to fault Acer here since no name brand Android tablet has a full sized USB port but I really miss having that port.
Where I do fault Acer on this tablet is their implementation of Android is poor whereas the job they did on the A500 was outstanding in comparison. There is nothing major, it's a lot of little things. For example, on the A500 the charms (back, home, switch app) were in the bottom left corner but now they are in the center. In the lower left corner it an easy reach with the thumb, now you have to let go of the tablet on one side to reach the charms. Another example, on the A500 the tablet would automaticaly reconnect to known networks when they came into range, now I have to tell it to reconnect (same thing with Bluetooth). What's even stranger with the WiFi is I could leave the WiFi turned on in my A500 during a 2hr drive and still have over 80% battery left (even at 3yrs old) but this tablet ran down to under 30% after the same 2hr drive (at 2wks old). I am truely amazed that the A500 battery, at 3yrs old, could still last about 5hrs of continuous use. I don't think my new A3 lasts much more then that. Another trivial but anoying usability issue with the new A3 tablet is when you open a file like a PDF, where you have more than one program that could be used, you get a dialog to choose the app. On the A500 there was a checkbox you could select if you always wanted to use a particular program everytime (which I never used) and the list of programs to select from with a single click. Now you get the list to select from and then you make a second click to "use that program every time" or "use that program just once", 2 clicks every time if you don't want to always use the same program. If I have more than 1 program installed to open a particular type of file it's probably because I want to use the different programs in different situations. These little usability issues seem trivial but lots of little annoyances add up to a disapointing experiance. I'm not sure if the team that implemented Android on the A500 did an outstanding job or if the team that worked on the A3 did a poor job but it's very noticable.
UPDATE: I'm downgrading my review. Android lollipop has been out for quite some time now and Acer has still not provided an update to this tablet which is a current model. Updates are critictical to resolve security issues. Not only haven't they made the update available, they haven't provided any information to their customers when or even if they will ever update the operating system, I bought this tablet with 2GB of memory so it could support future upgrades.
Looking at their customer portal I see many people asking about updates but there are no responses from Acer. Are they abandoning these models, have they cut costs by eliminating the development staff, we just don't know because Acer wont say. You're better off buying from a company that understands the importance of communicating effectively with their customers.
| Standing screen display size | 10.1 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1200 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1200 Pixels |
| Processor | 1.5 GHz mediatek_mt8127 |
| RAM | 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM |
| Hard Drive | 128 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11bgn |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 8 Hours |
