My son bought an Android tablet around 18 months ago with a combination of Christmas and Birthday money. It became an extension of his body with him taking it everywhere to play games and watch YouTube videos about Minecraft and Garry’s Mod.

He recently leapt into bed one night (forgetting the tablet was on his bed) and broke the screen with his knee. It was a complete accident, but he was absolutely devastated by what had happened. I explained that if we couldn’t get a screen, I’d pay for half of any replacement as he had looked after it so well up until the accident.

And so the hunt began.

He previously had an Acer Iconia A3-A10 tablet. It had:

  • a 10.1" screen at 1280x800 resolution
  • a MediaTek MT8125T (quad-core 1.2GHz) CPU
  • 1Gb RAM
  • 16Gb storage

He was very happy with it too, so first of all, I looked for a screen. £40 for a screen that had to be shipped in from China. Ouch. I didn’t even know if everything else was OK and if a screen alone would get it back to full health. We ended up looking at replacements instead.

I looked online and all I found was a plethora of tablets which were no upgrade in terms of hardware, but for more money than he had paid for the original. Had technology stood still in the last 18 months?!

I came to the conclusion (along with others) that the best 10" Android tablet was the Nexus 9, which is a 9" tablet.

Not wanting to give up, I kept on looking. Asking work colleagues and friends for their opinions. Hunting for decent reviews (that weren’t written by non-technical users who expect an iPad for 20 quid). I was all ready for just buying the screen, until I came across a blog post by AtlasM which suggested the Acer A3-A30 was a decent 10" Android tablet! Was this what I had been looking for?!

As it turned out, he had gone through the same process as me (except he had bought alternatives… only to return them when he found they were actually no good) and then found the A3-A30. Unfortunately for us, it meant a bit more money was needed (by both me and my son) as it was £199 at Argos but it had a much better specification:

  • 10.1" screen at 1920x1200 resolution and protected by Gorilla Glass (something that might have saved his last tablet!)
  • Intel Atom Z3735 (quad-core 1.3GHz) CPU
  • 2Gb RAM
  • 32Gb storage

Ok! So Argos didn’t have it in every store, so I reserved it at a local branch (luckily we’re surrounded by about 3 or 4 Argos branches, so luckily one of them had stock). Spoke to my son the next morning and showed him the tablet. He was quite impressed and said he wanted it, so we picked it up after I finished work this evening.

Wow. It’s actually very very good. I didn’t get much time on my son’s old tablet, but I do know it wasn’t the fastest. This new one runs rings around the old one. So I’m happy, but more importantly, my son is happy.

Luckily, his “Clash of Clans” save game has restored on his new tablet. Thank goodness for cloud storage!

So, if you’re in the hunt for a decent 10" Android tablet and are disappointed by the variety, don’t give up! There are good 10" Android tablets out there! The Acer Iconia A3-A30 is proof of that.

(Again, I must thank AtlasM for his blog post/review as without it, I might not have even considered it).