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Acer Iconia One 10 and Iconia Tab 10 (2017) Hands-on Review

Acer Iconia One 10 and Tab 10 (2017) hands-on review: Acer’s Iconia Android tablet family is, for the most part, a pretty uneventful range of slates, however, the new Tab 10, on show at Computex 2017, is the first on the market to pack in a Quantum Dot display.

It looks relatively unchanged compared to its predecessor from an aesthetic standpoint, with a predominantly textured 9mm thick plastic body, speaker grilles skirting either side of the bezel and specialised controls at their midpoints with a reflective, circular treatment on each.

On the front, the Tab 10 possesses a 10.1-inch WUXGA Quantum Dot IPS2 LCD. In practice it’s a pleasingly bright, colourful and crisp viewing experience head-on, however, drift to the sides even slightly and the visibility drop-off is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent memory, conceding to washed-out visuals and serious issues with reflectivity; a pretty significant issue for the product’s main selling point.

To the right of the display is the ‘Media Master’ key, letting you toggle through various screen optimisation modes, altering colour and contrast settings for movies, photos or general browsing, whilst on the left you have an easily accessible front-facing volume rocker.

The audio experience, meanwhile, is comprised of four front-facing speakers, one in each corner, with a fifth subwoofer positioned under the chromed plastic camera surround on the tablet’s back. Overall the DTS-HD-enabled sound is decent, although don’t expect earth-shattering performance considering the Tab 10’s affordable nature overall.

On the software front, the MediaTek-powered 2017 Tab 10 offers a near-stock take on Android 7.0, augmented by Acer’s EZ widget and the ability to enable/disable the rear-mounted subwoofer from the notifications shade. Tapping the Iconia button in the centre of the dock on your main home screen brings up four options; one is a simple memory cleaner to help optimise performance, followed by EZ Mode, which lets you style and save or export your interface to a dedicated account for use on other devices.

EZ Snap adds a three-finger gesture support for taking screenshots, whilst EZ Wake Up is an enhanced take on tap-to-wake that lets you quick-launch select apps whilst the tablet’s screen is off, with a predefined gesture.

Acer Iconia One 10

Launching alongside the new Tab 10 was the more conventional One 10 – another annual refresh that shares in many of the design traits of its more media-centric sibling, such as dual speaker grilles running down either side of its frontage.

Acer Iconia One 10: Front

Like the Tab 10, the One 10 sports a 10.1-inch WUXGA display (no Quantum Dot tech this time), however, which again suffers from notable brightness drop-off and washed-out imagery, compounded by highly reflective cover glass at more extreme angles.

Where the One 10 stands out is its dual microUSB ports with OTG support. From a productivity standpoint, Acer envisages users charging the tab whilst simultaneously using the second port to connect an external storage device or another peripheral like a USB mouse.

It too comes running Android 7.0 with the same EZ smart tools along with a quad-core MediaTek processor at its heart and the promise of eight hours of battery.

Both the Iconia Tab 10 and One 10 are set to touch down in the UK in October with as yet undefined pricing. If their predecessors are anything to go by, both should be affordable slates with unique talents to cover specific use cases for your average user.

There are unquestionably sexier devices out there already but in the case of the Tab 10, for the time being, if you want to experience Quantum Dot hardware on a tablet, it’s the only place you’re going to find it.

Read next: Acer Nitro 5 hands-on review

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