Contents of delivery:
- Tablet
- Network adapter
- USB cable
- User guide
- Warranty card
Introduction
Tablet PC Acer Iconia B1-A71 was announced earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show. Despite the huge number of cheap “pills”, Acer company I also decided to roll out a device that would be available to almost every potential tablet buyer. This was made possible due to the low cost: at the time of the announcement, the price of the B1 did not exceed €120.
Now in Russia it costs about 5,000 rubles - less than analogues from other famous brands, but more than a whole swarm of “flies”, “texets” or “rhythmixes”. Therefore, users will have to choose: either an adequate brand and not the best interesting opportunities, or B-brand with good technical parameters. For those who do not bother with the characteristics of devices, I recommend Acer; for others, it makes sense to purchase more powerful analogues from other manufacturers.
If we talk about the Iconia B1-A71 model, it stands out among other inexpensive tablets due to the presence of Bluetooth and GPS. The latter will be useful for drivers: Acer big screen(the route is clearly visible) and there is a full-fledged operating system (install any navigation program you like).
Design, dimensions, control elements
Although appearance tablets are practically no different from each other, Acer still managed to slightly diversify the boring design of “tablets”. The internal area is made of glossy black plastic, the edging of the front side forms a small edge, the edging around the perimeter is also made of plastic, but semi-glossy and painted in electric blue: it looks original, fresh and bright - just what the dull, faceless tablets lack Android. On the lower left corner there is an Iconia nameplate of the same color. The side edges smoothly transition to the back side (black, semi-gloss). It has a hill in the center. The purpose is not entirely clear, most likely a design decision.
Oddly enough, fingerprints remain only on the front panel, and they are erased very easily. The assembly is fine, but the back and front sides bend slightly when pressed. The device body does not crunch, does not play or creak. After several weeks of use, several shallow scratches appeared only on the back cover, and the screen, apparently, is protected by glass.
Dimensions - 197x128x11.3 mm, weight - 320 grams. Holding it with one hand is not entirely comfortable, since the plastic is smooth and slippery, but the screen has wide frames that you can grab more tightly without fear of accidentally pressing the touchscreen.
On the front of the device there is a front camera located at the top right. There is no light sensor, so the brightness of the matrix backlight will have to be adjusted independently.
The volume rocker key and the on/off button are located on the right side. They extend slightly onto the back side, so pressing on them is not always convenient. A little higher is the microphone.
On the bottom there is microUSB, to the right there is a separate compartment with a card slot microSD memory. There is still empty space nearby; it seems to me that the manufacturer wanted to build in a slot for a SIM card. The standard 3.5 mm headphone output is on the top.
The speaker is located on the back side at the bottom right.
Acer B1 tablet and Meizu smartphones MX2 (bottom), HTC One(left), Samsung Galaxy S4 (top), iPhone 5 (right)
Display
This model has a simple seven-inch screen (physical size 17.8 mm) with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels (density 170 pixels per inch). Unfortunately, the matrix is not IPS (TN), the viewing angles are small: when tilted towards you and away from you (if you hold the device in a vertical orientation), the brightness and contrast decrease, when tilted to the left, the display sharply fades, and to the right, the colors are inverted.
The brightness is manually adjustable over a wide range: at night you can set it to a minimum for comfortable reading, and during the day to a maximum. In daylight the image on the screen is practically not distorted; in the sun the situation is, of course, worse.
The touch layer is capacitive, supports up to 5 simultaneous touches, the sensitivity is average.
Battery
The tablet uses a built-in (non-removable, single-cell) lithium-polymer (Li-Polymer) battery with a capacity of 2710 mAh, 3.7 V (10 Wh). The operating time disappointed me a little: 30-40 minutes of surfing the Internet, 20-30 minutes of playing games, about the same amount of launching various applications, 15-20 minutes of viewing photos - and the battery runs out. In general, this results in approximately 5-6 hours of active use or 3.5 hours of video playback (HD, audio output to headphones, maximum brightness).
The tablet can be charged not only from network adapter(2.0 A), but also from USB.
Communication capabilities
The device contains a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n module, USB 2.0 (does not support OTG), and thanks to the MediaTek chipset, the device receives support for Bluetooth 4.0 and, more importantly, GPS. However, navigation testing showed that the receiver in the Acer B1 is weak, since even in open space it detects 4-5 satellites after 2-3 minutes of searching.
Memory, memory card
The RAM in the device is 512 MB (DDR3 SDRAM), about 200 MB of RAM is available by default.
8 GB Flash memory is provided for data storage (about 1 GB is allocated for applications, 5 GB for data storage). There is a slot for a microSDHC memory card, its maximum capacity is 32 GB. Hot-swappable. I tested the tablet with cards from 2 GB to 32 GB - everything was fine.
Camera
There is only one camera here - the front one, without autofocus, 0.3 MP. The OV7675 sensor is manufactured by Omni Vision Quality low, but quite good for communicating on Skype.
Performance
This tablet uses the MediaTek MT6517 chipset (analogous to MTK6577): two cores with a clock frequency of each 1.2 GHz (Cortex A9, ARMv7), Power VR SGX531 graphics accelerator (games like " Dead Space"go without problems). I won’t describe the chip and its capabilities in detail, since almost every second smartphone review on our website was dedicated to the MTK6577.
The device operates on Android OS version 4.1.2. The settings provide for over-the-air updates, so we will wait for new versions of the system.
brief information and a couple of performance tests:
Web browser
Installed standard browser. A fairly fast, convenient and bug-free page viewer. The screen resolution allows you to surf the Internet even without scaling pages.
Multimedia
Music player standard. The speaker volume is relatively high (when compared with similar devices), but sometimes it wheezes. The volume in the headphones is comfortable for listening to songs even on the street or in the subway, the quality is not bad.
The video player is also standard. Supports almost all video formats in any resolution and some audio formats.
Conclusion
I already partially explained the situation with the Acer Iconia B1 at the beginning of the review: you need a tablet from a well-known brand - buy it if you want a little more features (a better screen, a more powerful chipset, more memory, and so on) - take a closer look at B-brands:
Wexler TAB 7b. Costs about 5,000 rubles. It has a single-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, two cameras and 3G.
Prestigio MultiPad 2 PMP7280C. Costs about 5,000 rubles. RockChip RK3066 chipset (two cores), 1 GB of RAM, two cameras, screen matrix - IPS.
Roman Belykh (
Acer Iconia B1-721 tablet review | Introduction
Acer has never been successful in commercialization Android platforms and the release of truly successful tablets based on it. At the beginning of the journey of the smartphone division, there were many problems of adapting the absorbed E-Ten to modern market conditions, then a quick collapse Windows Mobile, rethinking market prospects. Unlike the company's computer division, things were not going well, and even today numerous representatives of the Liquid smartphone line occupy only a residual market share. The company's laptop strategy with smartphones does not work at all, but in the tablet segment it has found excellent and quite successful application. Acer took smartphone-tested suppliers and manufacturers as a basis, manufactured products in a light, youthful style, and came up with a wonderful presentation format under the sub-brand Iconia B1. Contrary to the controversial top products Iconia TAB under Windows control 8, everything worked out great and sales really went up. But where did yesterday's outsider of the Android race achieve such unexpected success?
The reasons are hidden on the very surface, because frequent visitors to stores in search of a tablet are the parents of end users or friends and relatives of parents. A tablet is suitable for a child of any age as an alternative to a fragile and small smartphone, provided it combines most of the functions of a laptop. And now those same parents, often owners of Acer laptops and monitors, are faced with the choice of an inexpensive tablet from a brand they know or a dubious pig in a poke. And, believe me, it is very difficult to instill in people who have reached social maturity in an era of stability the need for constant experimentation and a long-term selection of the best specific proposals, when there is a ready-made and time-tested answer. Of course, the majority of such buyers vote with rubles for the proven Acer brand, which offers a line Iconia tablets B1 is quite reasonably priced. Just a little cheaper than Samsung products and half cheaper than Apple iPad. An ideal first smart computer for a child, which you won’t mind seeing broken at one unexpected moment.
We couldn’t ignore such an active trend in the tablet segment, and therefore we chose one of the top modifications in the line – the model Acer Iconia B1-721, which can rightfully be considered one of the brightest representatives of the initial segment of tablets Russian market. Attractive appearance, low price, well-known computer brand and a bunch of attractive characteristics. It sounds quite tempting, but it is much more interesting to carefully study this model, which is what we did during the preparation of our review. So let's get started learning about Iconia B1 syndrome.
Acer Iconia B1-721 tablet review | Specifications
Taking into account the budget positioning of the tablet Acer Iconia B1-721, one cannot expect outstanding performance, but a quick study of the manufacturer's specifications gives a very optimistic forecast. Despite the modest hardware, there is a good set of wireless communications and quite capacious battery. However, all this data will be discussed in more detail in our review, but for now we bring to your attention a summary table of data.
| Specifications of the Acer Iconia B1-721 tablet | |
| Dimensions | 199 x 122 x 11 mm |
| Weight | 323 g |
| Screen | 7" TFT 1024 x 600 dots |
| Chipset | MTK MT6582, CPU Cortex-A7 2x 1300 MHz |
| RAM | 1 GB |
| GPU | Mali-400MP |
| Built-in memory | 16 GB |
| Memory cards | microSDHC |
| WiFi | 802.11n |
| Battery | 2955 mAh |
| Camera | Front VGA |
| OS | Android 4.2.2 |
Acer Iconia B1-721 tablet review | Equipment
Acer Iconia B1-721 comes in a small branded package with a very frivolous design and an abundance of meaningless objects. In the box itself, in addition to the tablet, you can find a network Charger, USB cable and many instructions. Nothing superfluous, only the essentials.
Acer Iconia B1-721 tablet review | Appearance
Appearance Acer Iconia B1-721 reminds us of the Nexus 7; at the same time, the design plays on the front surface elements of the Liquid line of smartphones. Careful plastic case Thanks to the dimensions of 199 x 122 x 11 mm with large beveled edges and rounded edges on the back, it fits very comfortably in the hand. And it’s really nice to hold it, since the weight of 323 g barely weighs on your hand when using it on the go. It’s more comfortable to use with two hands, and you can also feel the very decent build quality, the only pity is that the diagonal bend is almost 3 mm.
As mentioned above, the tablet body Acer Iconia B1-721 made entirely of plastic of various textures, although there are only three elements themselves: rear end sloping shape with textured engraving, as well as the front frame of the touch glass. At the bottom of the frame there are decorative stripes, some of which have through cutouts for sound output from the speaker on the left and the microphone on the right. On top of the glass there is a camera peephole, or, more precisely, a VGA matrix. There are no control keys or sensors on the front side - all control is virtual via touch glass with ten-point Multi-touch support.
On the sides of the body Acer Iconia B1-721 there is only the most necessary. On the left side there is a slot for microSDHC memory cards, and there is nothing at the bottom. The right end contains not only a volume rocker, but also a slot for a micro-SIM card, and on top there is a power button, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and microUSB. All. There is nothing more to say about the tablet's body.
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Cheap plastic and low quality The assembly sets the Acer Iconia B1-A71 apart from all the models we tested - the body creaks and bends. The design is eye-catching - the glossy black finish makes it striking but slippery. The tablet is surrounded by a blue border around the perimeter, which is why it looks unusual.
Dimensions and weight - 3.8
Acer Iconia B1-A71 weighs 320 g - average weight for a 7-inch tablet. Moreover, its thickness is greater than average for its diagonal. The dimensions of the device are 19.7 × 12.9 × 1.1 cm. The tablet is uncomfortable to hold in one hand, but this is most likely due to the slippery glossy surface of the case.
Ports and interfaces - 3.3
The Iconia B1-A71 has a built-in micro USB port, an audio jack, and a slot for a memory expansion card. Wireless interfaces include Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS receiver. There is no 3G modem.
Performance - 1.4
The Acer Iconia B-A71 showed one of the worst results in performance tests. The tablet is equipped with a dual-core MediaTek processor MTK 8317T, operating at 1.2 GHz, and PowerVR SGX531 graphics accelerator. Acer Iconia B-A71 has 8 or 16 GB of internal memory. Our tests were carried out several times, and the average values over five iterations are shown below. In the Geekbench 2 benchmark, the tablet received 821 points. In the SunSpider benchmark, the model's time is slightly worse than the average - 1397 milliseconds. The graphics chip showed the worst result in the T-Rex HD Onscreen C24Z16 test from the GFXBenchmark benchmark - 1 fps.
Display - 2.9
The 7-inch TN display with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels performed worst in our tests. The image quality is low, viewing angles are narrow, and brightness is low. Only color rendering can be called good. Touch input is accurate and the touchscreen does its job well. The Iconia B1 display has the worst maximum brightness among the models we tested - 204 cd/m2, the worst brightness distribution - 69% and an average contrast ratio - 747:1.
Battery - 2.3
The tablet battery showed results worse than average - 2 hours 55 minutes. in load mode, 12 h 1 min. in minimum load mode and 6 hours 27 minutes. in video viewing mode.
Camera
On the Acer Iconia B1-A71 case you will find only front camera 0.3 megapixel with video recording in VGA format. Needless to say, the pictures come out blurry, unfocused and generally terrible.
Type touchpad A touch screen is a device for input and output of information through a touch- and gesture-sensitive display. As you know, screens modern devices not only display an image, but also allow you to interact with the device.There are several types of touch panels known today. Naturally, each of them has its own advantages and disadvantages. Let us highlight the main four designs: Resistive, Capacitive, Projective-capacitive, With the detection of surface acoustic waves.
Resistive touch panels are among the most simple devices. At its core, such a panel consists of a conductive substrate and a plastic membrane that have a certain resistance. When you press the membrane, it closes with the substrate, and the control electronics determines the resulting resistance between the edges of the substrate and the membrane, calculating the coordinates of the point of pressure.
The advantage of a resistive screen is its low cost and simplicity of design. They have excellent resistance to stains. The main advantage of resistive technology is sensitivity to any touch: you can work with your hand (including gloves), a stylus (pen) and any other hard, blunt object (for example, the upper end of a ballpoint pen or the corner of a plastic card). However, there are also quite serious disadvantages: resistive screens are sensitive to mechanical damage, such a screen is easy to scratch, so a special protective film is often additionally purchased to protect the screen. Additionally, resistive panels do not perform very well under low temperatures, and also have low transparency - they transmit no more than 85% of the luminous flux of the display.
Capacitive technology touch screen is based on the principle that a large-capacity object (in this case a person) is capable of conducting electricity. The essence of capacitive technology is to apply an electrically conductive layer to the glass, while a weak light is applied to each of the four corners of the screen. alternating current. If you touch the screen with a grounded object of large capacity (finger), current will leak. The closer the point of contact (and therefore the leakage) is to the electrodes in the corners of the screen, the greater the strength of the leakage current, which is recorded by the control electronics, which calculates the coordinates of the point of contact.
Capacitive screens are very reliable and durable, their service life is hundreds of millions of clicks, they perfectly resist pollution, but only those that do not conduct electric current. Compared to resistive ones, they are more transparent. However, the disadvantages are still the possibility of damage to the electrically conductive coating and insensitivity to touch with non-conductive objects, even with gloved hands.
Projective-capacitive screens are based on measuring the capacitance of a capacitor formed between the human body and a transparent electrode on the surface of the glass, which in this case is a dielectric. Due to the fact that the electrodes are applied to the inner surface of the screen, such a screen is extremely resistant to mechanical damage, and taking into account the possibility of using thick glass, projective capacitive screens can be used in public places and on the street without any special restrictions. In addition, this type of screen recognizes pressing with a gloved finger.
These screens are quite sensitive and distinguish between finger and conductive pen presses, and some models can recognize multiple presses (multi-touch). Features of a projective capacitive screen are high transparency, durability, and immunity to most contaminants. The disadvantage of such a screen is its not very high accuracy, as well as the complexity of the electronics that process the coordinates of the press.
The essence of the operation of the touch panel with the determination of surface acoustic waves is the presence of ultrasonic vibrations in the thickness of the screen. When you touch the vibrating glass, the waves are absorbed, and the point of contact is recorded by the screen sensors. The advantages of the technology include high reliability and touch recognition (unlike capacitive screens). The disadvantages are poor protection from factors environment, therefore, screens with surface acoustic waves cannot be used outdoors, and in addition, such screens are afraid of any contamination that blocks their operation. Rarely used.
At the end of December, Acer introduced its budget tablet B1-A71 costing $150. It is clear that in Russia or Ukraine this tablet will have a higher price, about 200-220 dollars, but, nevertheless, it will be interesting to look at this model and understand what they saved on.
Appearance of the Acer B1-A71 tablet
Typically, budget and other tablets tend to have a boring design. Acer B1-A71 is an exception. Firstly, thanks to the blue insert, which adds some zest. Secondly, the unusual convex back cover. The body is made of plastic, which does not cause rejection. The build is not bad, for a budget device. The weight of the new product is only 320 grams and the size is 197.4 x 128.5 x 11.3 mm, which makes it one of the lightest and most compact tablets on the market.
Screen Acer B1-A71
The tablet display has a diagonal of 7 inches. The resolution is 1024*600 pixels, which is quite normal for the price of the device. The pixel density is 170 PPI. All the pleasure from the screen is spoiled by the terrible TFT matrix. It still displays colors more or less normally, but the viewing angles are just a nightmare. Even with a slight deviation, there is a strong distortion of the picture, and making out any information on the screen becomes problematic.
In addition, the display is covered only with protective plastic: there is no glass here. Therefore, when you press the screen, you can see how the plastic bends. Therefore, in terms of display quality this model deserves a negative assessment, because many budget tablets from China already have IPS matrices, which are head and shoulders above the brightness and color rendition of the screen installed in the Acer B1-A71 tablet.
Hardware or filling Acer B1-A71
B1-A-71 has a 2-core processor from the Taiwanese company MediaTek with a frequency of 1.2 GHz per core. The graphics core is PowerVR 531. RAM is only 512 megabytes, which is not enough, considering that Android system eats up a lot of RAM. The built-in memory is 8 GB and can be easily expanded with Micro SD cards up to 32 GB. In principle, the filling is quite good for a budget tablet. Most popular toys start up fine.
Operating system Acer B1-A71
The tablet has the latest version installed on the tablet. Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean, without any add-ons. Considering that the Acer B1-A71 is a budget device, there will most likely not be an update to version 5.0. The interface works quite quickly, although not as smoothly as on its more powerful counterparts. No radio.
Camera Acer B1-A71
The tablet has only a 0.3 megapixel front VGA camera, which is only 640x480 pixels. You can also shoot video, but you already understand what kind of quality the shooting will be... There is no main camera and this is understandable due to the low cost of the device. The quality of the front camera is not very good good quality and at the very least suitable for communicating on Skype.
The tablet has Bluetooth 4.0 as well as WI-FI module 802.11 b/g/n. There is no 3G support, which makes the tablet significantly unattractive. Also no GPRS and EDGE ( digital technology wireless transmission data for cellular communication). There is a microUSB v2.0 input.
Battery Acer B1-A71
The built-in battery has a small capacity of 2710 mAh. It is clear that with such a capacity you cannot count on a long life without an outlet. In active use mode, the tablet lasts about 3 hours.
Our conclusions and reviews about the Acer B1-A71
In general, to be honest, the tablet from Acer was not entirely successful. Among the advantages, we can note a pleasant appearance, Android 4.1, good hardware for such a price, and, in fact, a low price.
There are also plenty of disadvantages. This is a very poor screen matrix, no protective glass for the display, a small battery, and a weak front camera.
Technoreview advises that it is better to pay a little extra and get a more functional and high-quality tablet than to regret the purchase later. Although, if you have never used Android devices, then this tablet will be a good pass into this system. Or, as an option, buy it for your growing son or daughter, but before you let him use the Acer B1-A71 tablet, first warn him not to poke his fingers too hard into the display.
Watch the video review of the Acer B1-A71 tablet:
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