The Acer Iconia A500: My Android Baby

Acer Iconia Tab A500 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the iPads first came out, I had one for about a month. I caught the tablet fever like everyone else and got up early one morning to purchase the last iPad in Northwest Indiana (no joke). I got home, opened it up and for about two weeks, I was in love with the device. The screen looked great…but that was about all the great stuff I can say for it. It was too heavy. It had no expandable memory. iTunes was a pain to use with it, especially for categorizing the mp3’s on my computer. It had no outputs. I was sorely disappointed. So I turned to Android.

Bye Bye iPad, Hello Android Tab!

All in all, it was great if I only wanted to use it as a tablet, but I wanted something more. I wanted a device that was a tablet AND a portable computer. After a month, I sold the iPad on eBay and started looking around for an Android tablet. I had already had an Android phone for a few weeks, and since they had just started releasing the tablets, I decided to give one a try. I searched for reviews and discovered that Consumer Reports rated the Acer Iconia A500 as their best buy for Android tablets. At $400, it was a good price so I bought one.

It has about the same weight as an original iPad, but that doesn’t bother me because I don’t use it as an e-reader. It had a slightly larger HD screen and movies, photos and the OS looked crystal clear on it. Since it was running Android Honeycomb, the display looked even better, especially since I was used to Froyo on my phone.

Better than iPad

So how was it better than the iPad? For me, one of the largest reasons was not being chained to iTunes. I will tell you right now, I hate iTunes. Sure it runs well and it looks great, but its software that needs to approve everything you put on it, with only one source for apps. Android apps can be installed from virtually anywhere and to install third party apps, all you have to do is approve them.

Features of the Acer Iconia A500 Android Tablet

You can also attach it to the computer and simply cut and paste content. I love that simplicity and freedom. The expandable memory also makes a huge difference. The price difference between a 16 GB and 64 GB iPad is hundreds of dollars, but with my A500, all I have to do is plug in a micro SD card and I can instantly double the memory. The HD output also let me hook it to my Vizio television, so if I want to watch a downloaded movie, I only needed to plug it into my HD input on the TV and there’s the movie, without buying special equipment. For me, the Android tablet is a better, unchained version of the iPad.