I've just tested AutoCompleteEditText on a fairly large sample, over 1200 items, and all works smoothly - even on the emulator. my one observation is that changes to the text attributes for the edit box are not mirrored in the drop down and I couldn't find a option to change then separately.
I appreciate that this is a separate view, but it would be useful to be able to change the attributes for the list as well as the edit text, probably separately.
For example, I have an app that replaces the standard font with a custom font that better represents musical symbols. The AutoComplete would be perfect to use for Chord selection, but would need to display the selection Items using the custom font.
I think it would also be useful to be able to change the size of the font, the background colour and the font colour.
Steve