iPad 2 vs Acer Aspire ICONIA Tab A501
iPad 2 and Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB A501 are two nearly same sized tablet, iPad 2 is 9.7 inches and Iconia Tab A501 is 10.1 inch. Iconia Tab is available in 7 inch size too (Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB A101). Acer Aspire Iconia Tab A500 resembles with Motorola Xoom in internal specification. Only thing it is much lighter than Xoom, it’s 331 g, nearly half the weight of Xoom and in fact half the weight of iPad 2 too. Talking about the difference, as said earlier Iconia Tab is lighter but iPad 2 is thinner 13.3 mm vs 8.9 mm. Though both have 1 GHz dual core processor, they are different SoCs, so their performance will vary slightly. iPad 2 gives a slightly better performance. Both have 5MP rear camera and the front camera in Iconia is 2 MP while it is 0.3 MP in iPad 2. Aspire Iconia is built in with 32 GB memory while iPad 2 offers two options 16GB or 32 GB. And the main difference between iPad 2 and Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB A501 is the operating system while iPad 2 uses iOS 4.3.1 (iOS 4.3) Iconia Tab 501 uses Android 3.0 with a redesigned UI. Honeycomb is more futuristic operating system than iOS 4.3.
Acer Aspire Iconia Tab A501
The extremely light weight Iconia Tab looks solid and feels good in hand with the aluminum casing and anodized gloss finishing. The 10.1 inch 1024 x 600 resolution full capacitive multi touch screen is designed for rich multimedia display. It has 1GB RAM, 32 GB included memory, 5MP rear and 2MP front cameras and is powered by 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor. For the operating system it uses Skinned Android 3.0. with it’s own Acer UI. It also has HDMI out that support up to 1080p video play and Dolby Mobile sound.
The built in applications include Skype Mobile for video calling, Amazon Kindle, Zinio to read best UK magazines, and Acer clear.fi to stream and share music and videos. Clear-fi will automatically detect any device connected that run Windows, Linux or Android. For social networking it has Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. Seamless browsing is made possible with Adobe flash player 10.1.
Acer Aspire Iconia Tab Android is also available as Wi-Fi only (Aspire Iconia Tab A500). The 7 inch model also has two variations, Wi-Fi only (A100) and 3G (A101).
iPad 2
In comparison with iPad, iPad 2 gives a better performance with high speed processor and improved applications. The A5 processor used in iPad 2 is 1GHz Dual-core A9 Application processor based on ARM architecture, The new A5 processor’s clock speed is twice as faster than A4 and 9 times better on graphics while the power consumption remains same. iPad 2 is 33% thinner and 15% lighter than iPad while the display is same in both, both are 9.7″ LED back-lit LCD displays with 1024×768 pixel resolution and use the IPS techology. The battery life is same for both, you can use it up to 10 hrs continuously.
The additional features in iPad 2 are the dual cameras – rare camera with gyro and 720p video camcorder, front facing camera with FaceTime for video conferencing, a new software PhotoBooth, HDMI compatibility – you have to connect to HDTV via Apple digital AV adapter that comes separately. iPad 2 will have variants to support both 3G-UMTS network and 3G-CDMA network and will release the Wi-Fi only model also.
iPad 2 is available in black and white colors and the price varies depending the model and storage capacity, it ranges from $499 to $829. Apple also introduces a new bendable magnatic case for iPad 2, named as Smart Cover, which you can purchase separately.