There are times when you need a tablet, and just a tablet. You don’t need any special features, nor do you need it to be something spectacular. Maybe it’s for your kids, or maybe it’s just for light tabbing when you have the free time, or maybe it’s for your grandmom who needs just the basic features.

What do you do then? Take a look at entry level tabs such as the Acer Iconia One 7, of course, just like we at Technophile did.

Design and build

The usual first impression that one gets at the mention of an entry-level tablet is that of a black or grey slate – but the Iconia One isn’t like that. The first compelling factor about this tablet is that it comes in a wide range of colours. The review unit that we had received came in a deep shade of red, and it looked very pretty.

In terms of build too, Acer has done a good job with the Iconia One 7. The back panel is plastic, which feels decently strong considering its price. There’s no soft-touch matte rubber coating on the back as we see in tablets these days, but there’s a weave pattern on the panel that lends it a very good grip. It’s slim and light, and is comfortable enough to hold in one hand for long reading hours too. The build too, feels quite sturdy.

Specs and performance

Given the tablet’s price, the specs are very unassuming - a dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, and 1GB RAM. Our review unit had 16GB of internal storage space, and a microSD card bay for an additional 32GB of external memory. The performance is quite smooth for basic usage and even some light gaming. You also get Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, so that’s an added advantage.

The 7-inch display has a resolution of 1280x800 pixels, and the IPS panel is just good enough to read, play a few basic games and watch videos on the go. The speakers, however, are disappointing. As for the tablet’s cameras, we’d suggest you stick to your smartphone for taking pictures. For Skype calls, it’s a maybe, depends on how picky you are about resolution.

We liked the battery life – the company claims 7 hours, but we got a very realistic figure of 6 hours under our standard usage patterns.

Verdict

To be honest, the pricing is the only thing where Acer has gone wrong. Sure, there are best buy prices and they can drop to as low as ₹4,999 (on Amazon.in, but it was sold out at the time of this review) but it still doesn’t offer as much as the Asus Fonepad 7 for the same price. The latter offers data support, better specs and a better display too. Otherwise, if you get a good best buy price, and a basic tablet is all you need, this is the best entry-level tablet that you can buy.

₹9,100

Love – Build; balanced performance

Hate – Speakers; camera

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