New A700 owner

[Angus66]

I've been seriously looking at picking up either a A700 or a TF700 to replace my aging TF101. Kind of nervous about buying a TF700 - with my luck I'd get a defective unit.

NewEgg has had the A700 (Black or Silver) on sale for $349.99 for the last week or so, so I went to my local MicroCenter and asked them if they would price match NewEgg.
They agreed and I picked myself up one. Chose to buy at a retail store for ease of exchange/return in the event of a problem, even though I had to pay tax.

Can't say much about it yet as it's still going through it's initial charge. Should know soon if the seemingly random overheating issues are true or not.

Really looking to get Jelly Bean on this tablet!

 

[Batchman]

The Jelly Bean update supposedly fixed the problem.

 

[Angus66]

The Jelly Bean update supposedly fixed the problem.

That's what I had heard from a few A700 owners, so for $350 I thought I'd take a chance.

I really like the textured back as well - the Nexus 7 has a similar back texture and that tablet feels nice in my hand.

 

[Angus66]

I have been playing with the A700 this morning after a good overnight charging session. I'm on the as-supplied 4.04 version of ICS, font size is set to "Normal"
and I've disabled the Acer ring & virus scan.


Initial thoughts:


Screen is beautiful and very nice to look at & use. I have it set to max brightness and everything really pops. It's not quite as nice as the Asus TF700 screen
when you have them side-by-side to compare, but for what I paid for the A700 it's really not a fair comparison anyway. Same can be said for the brightness
difference. I don't plan to take it out of the house (I have my N7 for those occasions) so the Super IPS display isn't on my "must-have" feature list.
The display looks better than my Asus 25.5" desktop 1920 x 1200 LCD I use everyday, but the Asus is a couple of years old so it's not an entirely fair comparison.


Screen sensitivity out of the box could be a little better - I'll be playing with the settings today to see if I can improve this. Hopefully Jelly Bean will improve things
even further when I receive the update.


My biggest concern before purchase was excessive heat building up and problems related to that. I have several other tablets in my home + an infrared temperature
gun for comparison and measurements.
I also have System Tuner Pro installed on the tablets that support it's cpu temp function.


During normal (extended) web browsing, the backside of the tablet has reached a temperature of 102 - 106 degrees. My N7 backside surface temps are very close
to the same temperature when used for prolonged web browsing.
The temperature will vary based on the exact area being measured and the way the tablet is placed and/or held.
The only time (so far) that I've experienced excessive heat is when streaming video from YouTube with the tablet resting on my lap. A quick check with my temp gun
showed the back was in the 118 – 120 degree range. CPU temp was 160+ degrees.


I have an inexpensive tablet stand from Amazon that I placed the tablet in and streamed the same YouTub video again:





As can be seen, it holds the tablet up off the table/desk and allows for air to cool the backside of the tablet. Obviously the tab will run cooler than when it’s sitting on
my lap with my pants pressed against the back. The A700 didn’t get quite as hot, staying in the 95 – 98 degree range.


In the same stand, watching a movie stored on the internal memory or on a microSD card results in less heat than web browsing – tablet stays about 80 – 84 degrees
Fahrenheit on the surface. This to was similar to my N7 temps.


So the heat put off by my A700 doesn’t seem excessive so far except for YouTube streaming. I hardly ever watch streaming YouTube videos though, so that’s not a
big deal to me.


So far so good!

 

[jazzguy]

I have been playing with the A700 this morning after a good overnight charging session. I'm on the as-supplied 4.04 version of ICS, font size is set to "Normal"
and I've disabled the Acer ring & virus scan.

....

So far so good!

Angus66,

Great user review. Please share your experience again after you have done OTA for Jelly Bean, especially on heat, brightness and touch screen smoothness issue.

Thank you.