Acer Iconia B1-720

Like Samsung, the Acer philosophy on tablet design is simple: Meet market-leading Apple’s monolithic iPad offering with a barrage of tablets in a number of styles, with various functionality, different operating systems across the price range. Ticking the boxes on the Acer Iconia B1-720, then: This one’s a budget-priced 7” tablet with the Android 4.2 OS upon release.

The large-bezel design is reminiscent of the Google Nexus 7, the natural competitor for the B1-720 and … ah, let’s just cut right to the chase. The Iconia B1-720 is a budget-priced tablet that is unfortunately made that way: Chief example comes in the basic edition’s standard 8 GB storage – That’s right, *8 GB*. Translation, after preinstalled software is accounted for: approximately diddly squat.

Meeting the low (low!) storage space in disappointment is the pitiful 1024 x 600-pixel resolution screen. Don’t even get us started about including this sort of Atari 2600-level hardware in a 2014 release; suffice to say that packaging up this sort of “technology” in a kinda sorta Nexus-looking way won’t fool anyone after the slightest experience with viewing. “Adding” to the experience is the MediaTek MT811 1.30 GHz dual-core processor, a truly great CPU – for 2011.

You get the idea. You’ve heard of cutting corners to produce a budget-priced tablet case? Well, the Acer Iconia B1-720 is utterly cornerless. It is without corner. As far as we’re concerned, the biggest mystery about this tablet (and really the only matter requiring consideration) is why exactly Acer insisted on marking this device as an Iconia; this device could weigh on the reputation of what is otherwise a pretty fair line. Check out some of those models instead.