Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet with Android 3 'Honeycomb'

Unlike the Iconia Tab W500 we reviewed last issue the Iconia Tab A500 uses the Android operating system, not Windows. The latest version, Android 3 is designed for tablet computers in ways that previous versions, designed for phones, weren't.

The interface of this new version lends itself much better to the larger screen of a tablet, although in some ways it doesn't look as good – the navigation bar that now appears at the bottom of every screen looks quite old-fashioned, though it worked well.

With a widescreen 10.1in display and two cameras, at the front and rear, the A500 is well set up for watching videos and making video calls. As with all tablets, the screen became clouded with fingerprints after a little use but it was nothing a cloth didn't clear. We found it a bit dimmer than we'd have liked, even with the brightness turned up fully.

The fast Nvidia Tegra 2 processor means there's little lag or delay after pressing a button, something older tablets struggled with. It connects to wireless networks but not Bluetooth or to mobile phone networks so it's limited to being internet-connected only when within range of a wireless network.

A miniature HDMI socket allows it to be connected to external screens and it has a useful single USB socket for attaching storage devices, plus a micro USB socket for computer connection. Oddly, there's a separate socket to which the supplied mains charger attaches - it's not clear why Acer didn't use the micro-USB socket for charging too. Unlike the iPad the A500 includes a GPS receiver.

The weight is a problem: Acer's website says the A500 is ‘lighter than a magazine' but they must mean a very weighty one, as the A500 became quite uncomfortable to hold after a short while. Battery life isn't great - it'll last a couple of days under moderate use, but it's not up to the impressive levels of the iPad.

We preferred the slimmer and lighter design of the Motorola Xoom, another tablet running Android 3, on which the bezel is smaller, although even the Xoom was fairly heavy. And unlike the Windows-running Acer W500, this model doesn't have a connector to attach a keyboard, and nor can you connect a Bluetooth keyboard.

The model we looked at comes with a decent 32GB of storage space but a cheaper 16GB model is also available (expected at time of writing to cost £380). Both include a copy of Dataviz Documents to Go, which can edit Microsoft Word and Excel files and view PDFs.

There's little wrong with the Acer Iconia Tab A500. It may lack the flair of Motorola's Xoom, but otherwise it's a very good tablet computer.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 is available from Save On Laptops