[Acer Iconia A700 and A510] Beknatok:
Amazon delivered my A700 last Friday, and spent most of Friday & Saturday messing with it. I've install a large number of apps & games to try out. I have NOT yet unlocked my bootloader/rooted, in case I do decide to return the A700. I did not do a full factory reset when I got the A700 either. Finally, I'm using my A700 in conjunction with a Poetic HardBack Case.

Pros: The HD screen is fantastic. I compared it against my gal's iPad 1 and iPad 3, and it is easily comparable to the iPad 3. The iPad 3's resolution is a hair better, but one can only tell if you are looking very closely - for all practical purposes, they are on par. I found that using auto-adjust brightness, left the screen too dim to my tastes. Instead I manually set the screen to approximately 30% brightness, and found that that setting is suitable for everything except outdoor direct sunlight. When I tested outdoors, I kicked up the brightness and found that 80% was the minimum needed to be usable in direct sunlight. Additionally, there is no backlight bleed.

As an Android fan, I like to tweak my devices & am a strong believer that Android's 3rd party offerings are one of its strong points. That being said, I've disabled Acer Ring, and installed Chrome & Dolphin to replace the stock browser, Nova Launcher to replace the stock launcher, and QuickPic to replace the gallery. It is also trivial to unlock the bootloader & a rooting method has already been released.

The A700 has a very solid heft and feel to it. It does not feel like it is cheaply-built. I like having dual speakers and found that the sound was good. Finally, per the Service Guide, the A700 is very easy to dismantle.

Cons: Acer did install some redundant bloatware apps, which I will immediately rip out when/if I commit to the A700 & root it. These include the Amazon App Store, an Acer Photo & Video app, Acer Ring, and a worthless anti-virus app. Thankfully, this is the only con I could come up with except...

Heat: This deserves its own section. The A510 had reported heat issues and the A700 definitely shares that as well. Due to the internal design, the CPU/GPU mainboard is on the lower right and when used heavily, can become unbearably hot. In my experience over the weekend, I found that casual use such as browsing, e-mail, & other productivity apps, only caused the A700 to get warm but not uncomfortable.

However, when I play-tested several games - Heavy Gunner, Flick Football, & Cut The Rope, the A700 got HOT. I use a Poetic HardBack Case, which "insulates" my hand but inhibits heat dissipation. Additionally, the A700 did crash on me a few times while gaming. I presume that the crashes were due to heat, but am uncertain. After each crash, I'd remove the A700 from the case to feel it back "naked," and it was excessively hot... hot enough that I wouldn't have continued gaming had the tablet been naked. I spent about 1 hour TOTAL, play-testing the above three games and all crashes occurred within that timeframe.

Studying the photos from the Service Guide, I'm curious to open up the A700. Looking at the back panel, it is lined with some sort of metal panel. Then there are several "pads" which contact different points on the mainboard. I'm curious to see if those "pads" are thermal pads and/or whether the metal panel on the back is supposed to act as a primitive heatsink to help disperse heat. If yes to both, I'm interested in experimenting with changing out/upgrading the thermal pads and using some paste. Additionally, I'm toying with the idea of modding the back panel to make a vent.

That's it for now. I'll be happy to field any questions & post more thoughts as the week goes on.

UPDATE:

My curiosity got the best of me, so I went ahead, opened up the A700, and added some thermal paste to the thermal pads. Check out my write-up here.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1735318