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Acer Iconia B1 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £150
inc VAT

This budget tablet was always part of Acer's B-team, and it's now outgunned by far superior rivals

Any budget 7in tablet is still invariably going to be compared to the outgoing Google Nexus 7 (2012 edition). Google’s tablet may well be over a year old now, but it still remains one of the undisputed kings of the 7in arena – and at £159 its a chunk cheaper than its £199 replacement, the new Nexus 7.

Rivals need to do something special to make them stand out therefore, but whereas the Acer Iconia A1 with its 4:3 screen had a niche to fill as a kind of Android-powered alternative to the iPad Mini, the Iconia B1 is very much second-string on all fronts.

Acer Iconia B1

The B1’s bulky plastic chassis won’t be to everyone’s taste, but its rounded edges and slimline 340g weight make it very comfortable to hold. It never feels like a dead weight in your hands, but we had some concerns over its build quality. Its silver edges were very firm, but there was a considerable amount of flex on both the rear and front panels that made it feel a little cheap and tacky.

The B1 has a good set of ports for a budget tablet, though, even if it’s not quite as well-equipped as the Iconia A1. A 3.5mm headphone jack sits on top of the tablet and underneath you’ll find a MicroUSB port for charging the device. There’s also a small plastic flap concealing a microSD card slot for adding another 32GB of storage to its 16GB of internal memory. The flap itself is quite flimsy, but we were pleased to have the option of expanding the B1’s storage, as this is quite unusual on a budget tablet. There’s no main camera, sadly, but a tiny camera sits in the top-right corner for video chat or blurry self-portraits.

Acer Iconia B1

The tablet’s 7in screen was less impressive. It uses a standard LCD panel and has a 1,024×600 resolution, giving it a lower pixels-per-inch rating than both the Nexus 7 and the Iconia A1. The screen looked reasonably sharp, but its narrow viewing angles affect image quality unless you look at the tablet straight on. Its grainy coating doesn’t help either, as this had a tendency to distort colours slightly, particularly when the screen had picked up a few fingerprints.

Acer Iconia B1

The screen could be better, but the Iconia B1 is no slouch when it comes to processing power. It has a dual-core processor running at 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM, which proves enough to run Android smoothly, and it completed our SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in a surprisingly quick 1,605ms when we used the Chrome browser. This puts it on par with the Nexus 7 and is only 100ms slower than the quad-core-based Iconia A1. The tablet is unlikely to be able to run any demanding 3D games, though, as it wasn’t able to run our 3DMark Ice Storm graphics test.

The Nexus 7 pulls ahead again when it comes to battery life, though, as the B1’s 2,640mAh battery only lasted six hours in our continuous video playback test with the screen set to half brightness. This isn’t bad for a budget tablet, but it pales in comparison to the ten hours we saw from the Nexus 7.

Acer Iconia B1

The rest of the Iconia B1 is fairly unremarkable. Unlike its big brother, the B1 uses a standard version of Android’s Jelly Bean 4.1.2, not the latest 4.2.2. This leaves the B1 feeling a little dated by comparison, and we missed features such as multiple user accounts, but it’s still fine for single users. We were able to jump straight into Google Search or use the webcam from the standby screen and sync various email accounts to the device. There’s also a customisable app bar above the onscreen menu buttons that lets you access your favourite apps from any of the five home screens.

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Basic Specifications

Rating***
ProcessorARM MT6517
Processor clock speed1.2GHz
Memory1.00GB
Memory slots1
Memory slots free0
Maximum memory1GB
Size12x128x197mm
Weight340g
SoundN/A
Pointing devicetouchscreen

Display

Viewable size7 in
Native resolution1,024×600
Graphics ProcessorN/A
Graphics/video portsnone
Graphics Memory0MB

Storage

Total storage capacity16GB
Optical drive typenone

Ports and Expansion

Bluetoothyes
Wired network portsnone
Wireless networking support802.11b/g/n
PC Card slotsN/A
Supported memory cardsmicro SD
Other portsnone

Miscellaneous

Carrying caseNo
Operating systemAndroid 4.1.2
Operating system restore optionrestore partition
Software includedN/A
Optional extrasN/A

Buying Information

Warrantyone year RTB
Price£150
Detailswww.acer.co.uk
Supplierhttp://www.argos.co.uk

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