Recensione breve del Tablet Acer Iconia Talk S A1-724

The Acer Iconia Talk S' case is constructed of stable polycarbonate. Thanks to its slightly roughened surface, the tablet is grippy, and fingerprints and dirt don't quickly begrime the high-gloss finish. The tablet's feel also benefits from the rounded edges and corners. The case can only be warped slightly under pressure, and its gap dimensions are even. The phablet's simple design doesn't really distinguish it from the masses - and it's only available in blue.

In terms of thickness, at 8.5 mm (~0.33 inches), of the competitors only the Lenovo Tab S8 is thinner. The back side of the Iconia Talk S is not removable - the two micro SIM card slots and the microSD card slot are located on the sides of the tablet.

Acer outfitted their 7-inch tablet with a 64-bit Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 quad-core SoC, including an integrated Qualcomm Adreno 306 graphics card and 1 GB of working memory. At 16 GB, the internal flash storage is standard for this price class and can be expanded by up to 64 GB via microSD card. In terms of connections, the Iconia Talk S offers a micro USB 2.0 port and a 3.5 mm audio jack - also standard for this class.

Telephone & Speech Quality

The Iconia Talk S uses Google's standard telephone app. As such, all the important functions, like call lists, favorites and groups are included.

During our test conversation, the phablet sounded reasonably good, though our conversation partner heard a few bothersome noises. All in all, however, the tablet did well here. Thanks to the device's high maximum volume, the speakerphone function is definitely useable - though the louder the voice, the tinnier the sound.

Cameras & Multimedia

The main camera on the back side of the Iconia Talk S has a resolution of 5 megapixels (maximum 2595 x 1944 pixels), which is reasonable for its class. Of the competition, only the Lenovo Tab S8 offers a higher resolution. Auto-focus is also on board, but flash is a no-show. In bright environments, the back camera takes reasonably good pictures, though they suffer from a lack of sharpness and sometimes muddy colors. The lens' low-light performance certainly leaves something to be desired. Directly compared to the tablet's competitors, we see that there is unquestionably room for improvement in this area.

The front camera offers a resolution of 2.0 MP, which is sufficient for the occasional selfie or groupie. With the exception of the Lenovo Tab S8 with its 1.6 MP, the rest of the competition is on par with our test device here.

The 2 MP lens' images are plagued with a lot of image noise and a lack of sharpness. In adverse lighting conditions, the pictures are no longer worth the effort.

Accessories

In the tablet's packaging, Acer includes a USB charger, a standard stereo headset and a few quick start guides. To date there are no optional accessories designed specifically for the Iconia Talk S.

Warranty

Acer chose to outfit their phablet with a 12-month carry-in warranty.

The Acer Iconia Talk S' 7-inch LCD display with IPS technology has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. This resolution is lower than that of the competition, especially the Lenovo Tab S8 and the Medion Lifetab S8311, both of which offer a considerably higher resolution.

At a maximum of 370 cd/m², the screen's brightness is satisfactorily high and lies more or less on par with the competition. Only the Lenovo Tab S8 glows substantially more brightly. At an 88% similarity across the screen, the display's brightness distribution is very even - more even than most of the tablet's competitors. Only the Medion Lifetab S8311 glows more homogeneously.

In the browser benchmarks, our test device is more or less on par with the Medion Lifetab S8311. In the somewhat older Sunspider 1.0 benchmark, on the other hand, only the HP Slate 7 6100en Voicetab surpasses the Iconia Talk S, though our tablet beats the HP device in the Octane V2 benchmark. In the Kraken 1.1 benchmark, our test device is only able to eclipse the Asus Fonepad 7 FE375CG. Due to the fact that the Acer tablet lacks an Android browser, we ran our tests using the pre-installed Google Chrome browser. In everyday use, this browser reliably loads websites at a high speed.

The internal mass storage in our test device is very quick and offers 16 GB of storage space. Most of the competition has to admit defeat here - only the Medion Lifetab S8311 can keep up.

Temperature

In our test, the Acer Iconia Talk S' case warmed up to a maximum of 31.9°C (89.42°F) during a prolonged period under full load. We measured an average of just 28.8°C (83.84°F) on the underside.

The test device remains cool in idle mode as well. On average, the temperatures reached 25.6°C (78.08°F) on the back side and 27.4°C (81.32°F) on the front.

At 14 Watt hours and 3780 mAh, the Acer Iconia Talk S' battery is smaller than the rest of the competition's energy stores. Even so, our test device outshines its rivals here.

With a battery runtime of 5:28 hours under full load, the Acer Iconia Talk S keeps chugging along considerably longer than its best competitor, the HP Slate 7 6100en Voicetab. In our WLAN surf test, which is designed to simulate practical, everyday use, we set the display brightness to 40% (about 150 cd/m²) and run a script that loads a new webpage at 40-second intervals. The Iconia Talk S only ran out of steam after a full 12 hours and 2 minutes. Not even the Lenovo Tab S8 endurance-runner is able to keep up with that time - even with its bigger battery (16.3 Wh), the Lenovo device lost its vital signs almost two hours sooner. Our test shows that Acer's promised 12 hours of battery life wasn't an exaggeration. The tablet will easily last through a whole work day, as long as the user sets the display to a moderate level of brightness.

L'Acer Iconia Talk S è un buon tablet con molti punti di forza, ma anche molte lacune. Tra i grandi pregi del 7 pollici abbiamo uno schermo IPS  con una distribuzione omogenea della luminosità  e una luminosità massima ragionevolmente elevata, ma anche un SoC efficiente dal punto di vista energetico che ha abbastanza prestazioni per i software di uscita futura, incluso Android 5.0, grazie alla sua architettura a 64-bit. Il dispositivo resta sempre fresco ed ha un veloce storage interno al suo comando. Le buone prestazioni di navigazione e l'ottimo modulo GPS si aggiungono al divertimento. Il supporto LTE e le funzioni dual-SIM, che normalmente non si hanno in questa fascia di prezzo, completano il già buon pacchetto. L'ottima autonomia del tablet è la ciliegina sulla torta.

Non siamo particolarmente contenti delle prestazioni applicative del tablet, ma sono sicuramente sufficienti per un uso quotidiano. Il fatto che non siano presenti ne NFC e ne WLAN dual-band è un peccato. Tra i difetti di maggior peso abbiamo gli scarsi altoparlanti e le fotocamere che non sono in grado di scattare foto definite.

Per circa 230 Euro (~$240), potete ottenere un pacchetto complessivamente buono, che ha molte cose al punto giusto. Chi non può fare a meno di LTE e della funzione telefono dovrebbe dare uno sguardo anche al ben progettato e leggermente più economico Lenovo Tab S8. Ma se volete sostituire il vostro smartphone con un tablet, l'Acer Iconia Talk S è un'opzione interessante.

Nota: si tratta di una recensione breve, per la versione completa in inglese guardate qui