Motorola broke our heart when it announced the pricing of its tablet. However, we did not lose hope and sure enough, now here are
new kids on the block with shiny Honeycombs, which are much more realistically priced than the flagship tablet. Acer has announced the launch of its Iconia A500 tab.
This beautiful Wi-Fi only Tab can be yours for cool $450, and no binding contracts. Although, the tab is a bit thicker than Xoom and has half the storage capacity, it has solid 1GHz Tegra 250 SOC processor inside. In any case, you can increase the storage by 32 GB via MicroSD card. Its 10.1 inch LCD screen is capable of delivering 1280 x 800 resolution and lets you watch videos at 720p resolution. Unlike Xoom, it comes with pre-installed Flash. Its 3,260 mAh batteries are expected to give you up to 10 hours of performance, which is competitive with iPad.
The tablet is available for pre-order from Best Buy starting from April 14. You can also pre-order at any Best Buy store. The tablet will be available in the US from April 24. In the UK, you can pre-order the tablet from Amazon.co.uk, which has listed the tablet at £449.99 and it would start shipping on April 20th. Interestingly, the UK tablet sports 32 GB of internal storage.
However, the 10.1 inch tablet is not the only one getting a launch date. Acer has also released the details about its mini-tab Iconia A100, which is also expected to share the release date with A500. This tablet is also available for pre-order at Amazon for £299.99. While the mini-me tablet comes with the same processor as its bigger counterpart, its memory has been capped at 512 MB RAM. The tab otherwise looks fine but its 8GB on board storage has got to be its most disappointing feature. Though, again, thanks to its MicroSD card slot, you can augment the storage by 32 GB.
Acer recently replaced its top boss and the company is now looking to stress on quality instead of quantity. So, we expect some solid performance from these tablets. Lately, there had been reports about the poor sales numbers for Xoom and if these tablets provide a decent experience, then we assume that the things are going to get a lot more difficult for Motorola. As from the consumer's point of view, the more the merrier.
One thought on “Acer Ushers the New Era of Low Priced Honeycomb Tablets With A100 & A500”
Speed isn’t everything, cheap tablets tends to have horrible screen with unusable narrow vertical viewing angles making them close to unusable for things such as reading ebooks – for this reason I had to return otherwise nice Advent Vega tablet