Tablet Face-Off: Budget Models From Acer and Asus vs. Apple’s iPad 2 - blackgotho1967

IT appears that $400 or less marks the new sweet spot for 10-inch-class tablets. Archetypal Apple reduced its iPad 2 to it monetary value, and nowadays we have a pair of Android tablets, the Acer Iconia Tab A200 and the Asus Transformer Pad TF300, forthcoming in at $350 and $380, respectively. If you suffer quaternity C-bills and want a 10-inch tablet, which of these represents the best deal? The answer may surprise you.

Or maybe not. We've already well-grooved that, for some, an Apple iPad 2 may be enough tablet and represent the better bargain over the newer fractional-generation iPad. But nowadays we give birth cardinal new Android models, each from large PC manufacturers, and each competing for the same market that Apple's targeting with its iPad 2.

Of the three, the Asus Transformer Pad excels in some of the PCWorld Labs' tests, and stumbles slightly in others. Notwithstanding, its overall performance score puts it just a fewer points behind the iPad 2. Acer's Iconia Check A200, clearly the most valued-priced model of the three, makes some sacrifices that aren't worth what you save.

Three Tablets: The Basics

The Acer and Asus tablets each have a 10.1-inch, 1280-by-800-pel resolution display; the Apple iPad 2 has a 9.7-column inch, 1024 by 768 display. At their base price, each three offer 16GB of storage and 1GB of remembering. Both the Acer and Asus own microSD card slots for supporting up to 32GB microSDHC cards, and the Acer true has a full-size up USB port, so you can jack in a USB flaunt drive, too. Extremity packrats leave love that Asus's Transformer Pad, for just $20 more than the substructure price—or for the one terms as Malus pumila's iPad 2 with 16GB—doubles the on-board memory to 32GB.

Of the terzetto, the Acer is the heaviest, at a hefty 1.58 pounds. The Asus weighs 1.4 pounds, while the iPad 2 weighs 1.33 pounds.

Both the Acer and Asus models hightail it Android 4.0.3 Icecream Sandwich, the most incumbent version of Google's Android OS that's available on tablets. Apple's iPad 2 ships with iOS 5.x.

Transformer Pad: A Value-Priced Rival

In our tests, the Asus Transformer Pad comes surprisingly close to beating outgoing the iPad 2. The two tablets showed some competitive give and take in our results, with the Transformer Pad edging iPad 2 in few tests, lagging in a a few others, and doing fitter than iPad 2 on our still and video image tests.

The surprising thing here is that the Transformer Pad has Nvidia's latest Tegra 3 processor inside. But like the Asus Transformer Prime, which too uses the Tegra 3 arrangement-on-microchip chopine, the Transformer Pad's performance was actually quite close to what the iPad 2–which uses Apple's A5 CPU circa first 2011–logged on many of our system performance tests.

The Transformer Pad was a chip faster than the iPad 2 on one of our Webpage load times; but the iPad 2 gravel it on GLBenchmark's mean frames per irregular on Egypt Standard, with antialiasing off (55 fps for Transformer Pad to iPad 2's 59). Transformer Pad nearly matched the iPad 2 on battery life, logging 7 hours, 30 minutes to the iPad 2's 7 hours, 37 minutes. It was speedy at recharging, too, requiring half the time to recharge as iPad 2 (1 hour, 55 minutes to the iPad's 4 hours, 10 minutes).

The Transformer Tablet gained ground on the iPad 2 thanks to its 8-megapixel tv camera, which captured better images on every of our metrics than the iPad 2 could muster; and it captured stately high-definition 1080p videos, overly. However, the Transformer Pad lost earth on our reveal tests: Our Judges deemed its still fancy presentation to make up selfsame good, but non as good as that of the iPad 2, and its video quality to be subpar compared with the iPad 2.

By comparison, Acer's Iconia Tab A200 falls behind both of these models with its Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. Running with last year's CPU means that this model stumbled hard connected some of our performance tests, peculiarly the GL Benchmark examine, although the A200's posted results were (mostly) succeeding with those of other Tegra 2-based tablets. The A200, inexplicably, lagged dramatically on our custom Web-page load tryout, taking more a instant to load what took the ordinal-gen iPad 10 seconds to complete, and the Asus, 12 seconds. Its battery life was an hour shorter than the others, lasting 6 hours, 31 minutes.

The Iconia Tab A200 was also hampered by its show, which could only manage a score of Fair in our comparative display tests. Factor in the A200's lack of a rear-facing camera, and IT becomes clear that you're making a lot of performance trade-offs for Acer's entry-point 10.1-inch tablet. Perhaps if this model was priced at $300 or still $275, those trade-offs would live worth the let down toll of entry, but as IT stands, you can do advisable for not much more.

All About Apps

Which brings us back to the iPad 2 versus the Transformer Pad TF300: Which is better? Well, the respond there, as with any pad of paper purchase today, depends largely upon how you project to use your tablet.

The toughest sell around Android tablets currently remains the wartlike land of Android tablet apps. A smattering of apps impress, and the rest, well, don't. And finding apps in truth optimized for a 10-inch class tablet cadaver a challenge, more than a yr after from the introduction of the first Android tablet OS. Android 4.0 Icecream Sandwich has non been the great savior for tablet apps every bit was erst hoped; too many apps continue to look like big smartphone apps, instead of apps that truly take advantage of a tablet's extra screen real estate.

Aside direct contrast, Apple continues to have the many mature app ecosystem, even if your capabilities are sometimes limited by Apple's walled-garden heavy-laterality. The deficiency of file-level control and direct file transfers (only syncing and register transfer via iTunes or the fog) remain unfortunate constraints on Apple's differently appealing tablet.

If you're purchasing a tablet because you're looking for smashing software and want to continue your costs down, you'ray still better off with iPad 2. But the Android platform has its advantages, likewise, and the Transformer Pad TF300 stiff the record-breaking economic value choice today—peculiarly if you choose for the 32GB variant at $400. Not only will you get a lot of bang for your shoot up at that terms, but the Transformer Pad's Tegra 3-optimized graphics are capable of some impressive tricks over the iPad 2, if the handful of games optimized for the platform appealingness to you.