Goodbye, A700

[ExtremeRyno]

I know I'm really the only person on this entire board actually posting about the A700....And as of today, I'm officially giving mine up (to my son). It was a decent tablet that really only has a tiny cult following. Even Acer gave up on it as there has been no news or updates in a year. I admit it wasn't worth the huge chunk of change it cost brand new. It might be worth it used for about $200....Well....New for $200....But it was good for a first tablet.

The major downfall is that it simply cannot handle what one would expect from a "high-end" tablet. In fact, I'd consider it more of a middle between, say, a NookColor and a Kindle Fire HD (except ten inches).

The greatest thing about this tablet are the fantastic devs that are trying their best to make it worthwhile. There aren't many, but they are awesome people and I salute their efforts.

It really put purchasing technology into a new perspective. I've learned to NOT be an early adopter and to wait it out to see what sort of following a device will get before jumping on a potentially sinking ship.

Maybe I'll run across some of you on another board on another tablet. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking a

Tegra Note...​

 

[Captain_Crypto]

I know I'm really the only person on this entire board actually posting about the A700....And as of today, I'm officially giving mine up (to my son). It was a decent tablet that really only has a tiny cult following. Even Acer gave up on it as there has been no news or updates in a year. I admit it wasn't worth the huge chunk of change it cost brand new. It might be worth it used for about $200....Well....New for $200....But it was good for a first tablet.

The major downfall is that it simply cannot handle what one would expect from a "high-end" tablet. In fact, I'd consider it more of a middle between, say, a NookColor and a Kindle Fire HD (except ten inches).

The greatest thing about this tablet are the fantastic devs that are trying their best to make it worthwhile. There aren't many, but they are awesome people and I salute their efforts.

It really put purchasing technology into a new perspective. I've learned to NOT be an early adopter and to wait it out to see what sort of following a device will get before jumping on a potentially sinking ship.

Maybe I'll run across some of you on another board on another tablet. Any suggestions?

I'm thinking a

Tegra Note...​

I too gave mine up to my daughter who now uses it for her college text books. Definitely not worth the money I paid for it back when it came out.

I was hoping for a new Nexus 10 but since that's not happening I'm going without a tablet until one catches my eye.

Sent from my SCH-I545 DEV

 

[edap]

I would strongly recommend the ASUS MeMO Pad FHD 10.

 

[ExtremeRyno]

Going to BestBuy today and getting a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2.

 

[ericw33]

For myself it's my newest tablet of four tablets and going strong. In fact I'm upgrading from a sandisk 64GB microSD to a 128GB microSD tomorrow. The 32 GB internal memory (SD) is very nice; many tablets today STILL are in the 4GB to 32 GB range. had Acer of gone to 1.5 GB DDR2 rather then 1GB it would have been better - as it is if you watch permissions and keep out unnecessary background processes 1 GB is adequate.

I'm going to buy a new tablet in late 2015 to 2016, once the 64-bit OS are more common or move possibly move to a Windows 8.1 tablet (I love 8.1 on my laptop and any 8.1 setup can run the Chrome OS and app for free as well along with Windows Metro and Windows Legacy apps). I also want to see how the SoCs turn out - NVIDIA is coming out with the Tegra 5 and Tegra 6 this year, 14 nm Intel chips are coming out, various octo-core chips (Samsung, Mediatek) and more so I think late-2015 would be the earliest for an upgrade (for me). The Acer W4 isn't bad as it has a microHDMI which the others do not. However, found a nice Surface Pro ($499 new) with 128GB and an Acer W700 with an older i3 for $429. Windows 8.1 IMO s better suited for multitaskin then Android, and systems are getting more capable.

The screen is really amazing - not the 299 ppi of the 10.1" Samsung Pro but still quite good at 224 ppi. Colors and the quality for me make it very suitable for reading, anime, movies, research and magazines/news-feeds. Much easier to read then my travel Gateway A60 (Acer A500) which is 149 ppi. The issue with the (Samsung) PRO other then price and lack of NFC is (at least for me) the GPU of the SoC will be pushing it for that display so some games won't be all that good. I'm waiting for more GPU power so I can use it as a portable console of sorts. Also Samsung tends to update A-LOT and forget older models. My Tab2 is only a year or two old yet they have a Tab 3 series, Tab Pro series, Tab Lite series out with a Tab 4 series about to be released!

I've found that some games and applications do not run smoothly if there are processes that take memory and resources in the background (ie system monitor). I run all my tablets with the exact same setup (SPB Launcher) so I can move from one to another with no loss of productivity. So on ALL tablets I went through "running" in the "control panel" and removed anything which shouldn't be running in the background or require necessary permissions.

One great thing with the A700 over my other tablets is the NTFS support. My COBY and Samsung only support FAT32, my Gateway A60 (Acer A500) and A700 support NTFS so I tend to use these for traveling. I connect up external hard drives (I used 4TB), connect it to my projector and viola 300" movies for family in the Philippines. When in N. America I tend to 'cast' (Chromecast) from YouTube and Netflix and it's easy enough for the wife to read. Since Chromecast handles the processing (and takes only 2 watts) I can afterwards use the tablet for other things.

I also use a BT mouse and keyboard at times (testing one out now). Works great with my various BT headphones and BT speakers as well so it's a great sound system. I use my Kindle books on moon-reader pro for text-to-speech (TTS) so it's great when waiting or traveling.

The only down-points on this tablet other then lack of Acer support is the charger (I prefer USB chargers as sometimes I can run 6-months off just batteries (solar) in the developing world) and the older 2.1 + EDR Bluetooth (basically 3.0 without the HS) as newer smart watches run better with BT 4.0 LE. Oh and HMA VPN doesn't have a great app like with Windows otherwise it would be the perfect media player for me (second only my Chromecast) (not really an A700 shortcoming) and 5GHz support would have been nice.

Personally I'm somewhat glad there have been no OS updates - upgrading to newer OS like KitKat can introduce incompatibilities - it's setup right now is smooth.

With the CEO and company loss issues due to a decline in PC revenue Acer seems to have caused harm in the market they were counting on -tablets. They really need to guarantee X-year support for OS updates of older systems and update (refresh) older units. With the A700 some mid-life tweaks like Samsung does (Tab2 to Tab3 to Tab4..) would have done it. Maybe a Snapdragon 800 or Tegra 5, 1.5 GB DDR3 RAM, KitKat via OTA would have refreshed the tablet for another year or two with little expense in RD. Also some better names - like Acer HD 2014 Edition rather then those crazy model numbers.

I originally planned 2 years service life per tablet (tablets have a shorter life-cycle right now like smartphones), I think with a DIY battery upgrade mid-life, I'll probably get about 6 years (the oldest tab is past 3 years now). For myself that makes it an excellent value.

I look forward to reading about your Samsung 12.2 Pro - very nice tablet. IMO, larger formats like this and the Hannspree 13.3 are great for us - umm - more mature people like my wife and I (read declining eye-sight, lol). Also thank-you for your past posts on the A700, just reading them now. Sharing as you did really helps others out. Thank-you.




EW

 

[benroveno]

On paper, this Acer A700 definitely looks better than Acer A500. At first reading the title of this thread, i thought you gave up with this tablet because it sucked. But glad to know i was wrong on that. I'm actually still on the verge of choosing between this A700, A500 or HP Slate 7 Extreme. But given that the price of this tablet has dropped to $200, i think i might consider of getting this one for me. Its specs make me drool.

 

[ericw33]

Depends what your end applications are.

I have a Gateway A60 which is basically a Acer A500 (Gateway is owned by Acer). The only difference is the Gatway never got the ICS update (still on Honeycomb) and there was a 64 GB version. I use it a-lot for travel as I can charge it from 12VDC battery packs (I've run it about 6 months never using AC), it has a flash camera and is great for family photos, and the full size USB is handy. As it can use NTFS (A60/A500 and A700) I have used 3TB external drives with it.

The A60/A500 runs a bit slow (1 GHz dual core) but it's not bad. The colors are bright (but it's not for outdoor sunlight) but you can see how grainy the PPI is compared to the A700. The A700 is very crisp and clear - you'll really notice it when going from the A700 to the A500 but not so much the other way.

A60/A500 = 149 PPI
A700 HD (1K) PPI = 224 PPI
Samsung Tab Pro (2K) (10.1) = 298 PPI


Where the A700 which I also own excels is reading, web-browsing, movies (ie: crunchyroll) and photos. Text is much sharper and colors overall much better. 1GB memory isn't enough for games - something like Choplifter HD you'd need to reboot the tablet for max. RAM. The Tegra3 also get the right side of the tablet (about a 2" square area) hot. So with a heavy game the CPU will probably throttle back in performance. The NVIDIA Shield would be much more suited for games as it has a Tegra4 PLUS a CPU cooling fan. That being said I do play some games on the A700 but more the C&C type which is not near as graphics intensive.

The Tegra3 is much faster, has NEON support (unlike the Tegra2), and has Jelly Bean OS which is much smoother. But it takes much longer to charge, I need a special charger and I can't use battery packs. The $200 is a really good price - I paid about 299 when it first came out. Even then it was a screaming deal over the Asus TF700 which was about $150 more.

Note - Be careful with newer tablets with Kit Kat (ie: Samsung Tab Pro) as it locks down the microSD card. Basically ONLY the application which made a folder can use it. So you can't use (say) ES FIle Explorer or ASTRO File Manager to move or copy files - you have to take the microSD card out and use a PC, Linux or a Mac.

btw - I just upgraded all my tablets with Sandisk 128GB microSD. Amazon has a introductory sale - $119.


The HP Slate Extreme is a whole different product then the A700. It's small like my Samsung Tab2 7" - I find the 8" better for travel personally. It's basically a re-branded NVIDIA Note 7" - very fast but so-so screen. I'd get a shield for games, a 8" for travel or a 10-12" for general use. I've found my 7" to be too small for browsing.


If you want to go to 2K I'd wait a bit longer. IMO, the Tegra4/Snapdragon800s are better suited for 1K - at 2K they are running full out. Intel has 14nm chips coming out, the Tegra 5 & 6 are coming out, 64-bit and so forth -- better suited to the demands of 2K. That being said 2K uses more resources so a battery will drain faster as everything works much harder. Thus 1K display devices like the A700 have a place. Also Samsung will release some more AMOLED tablets soon. Some prefer super-AMOLED to the current offerings. It might also cause the Tab Pros to drop in price.

Tip:

All my tablets are setup the same way - same launcher, file locations, applications locations and so forth. So switching between them is very easy as they all appear the same! About the only diference are the subtle ones caused by the different Android OS versions.



EW