Acer Iconia Tab A500 now selling for $449 USD (uses Honeycomb)

[hugh]

Acer announced today that it's first tablet computer using Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS is now available for pre-order in the United States. No word yet on Canadian availability.

Shipping later this month (April 24th) in the U.S., the Acer Iconia Tab A500 will sell for $449 USD, $50 cheaper than the entry level Apple iPad2.

The Acer tablet comes in a modern aluminum design that weighs about 1.7 pounds and is just over a half an inch thick. Features of the new tablet include a a 10.1-inch screen 1280 x 800 pixel multi-touch screen, dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 250 Cortex A9 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, accelerometer, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, 2 megapixel fixed-focused front-facing webcam, two 3260 mAh Li-polymer batteries for up to eight hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of WiFi Internet browsing and WifFI capabilities.

In a nice touch, the tablet comes with 16GB of internal storage and a Micro SD card slot for up to 32GB of extended storage so you won't need to worry about running out of memory for you multimedia files or applications.

[NineBall]

I'm excited for this. My one sister-in-law is a huge Apple fan, but my wife, other sister-in-law and I are all a little more into doing whatever we want with our things and use Android and Windows devices instead. My wife has been thinking about the Xoom as she likes the tablet experience she gets with her sister's iPad but the cost is a little too high. The Iconia A500 carries a much nicer price tag and I have been using Acer laptops for years with no problems so this seems like a pretty sweet deal, especially with the 32GB uSD slot expansion. Hopefully the price is in-line when it crosses the border or I might have to pick it up down south.

[hugh]

To me, this seems like it has a lot more potential than the Xoom.

It has pretty much everything the Motorola has with Honeycomb, is $250 cheaper and has a MicroSD slot

[99semaj]

Sounds like this one is right in the sweet spot. Can't wait to see one.

[Danster]

If it's anything like the track record ACER has with it's products, it will be no frills at a good price and be just as reliable as anything they ever made. I've had made (still have) many ACER items and they are still going strong.

[Coder2]

Originally Posted by hugh

To me, this seems like it has a lot more potential than the Xoom.

It has pretty much everything the Motorola has with Honeycomb, is $250 cheaper and has a MicroSD slot

I think you mean $150.... but its only 16gb internal storage, its also thicker & heavier then the Xoom and let me tell you Xoom is already on the heavy side, I couldnt imagine holding +100grams more....

There are reports that Xoom will be coming out with a 16gb version of its own soon which will most likely be priced same as this so if that does end up happening I dont see how it would be any better. Need to hear about the build quality on this Acer and how good they are with updates.

Either way nice to see more tablets flood the market.

[windsor]

I was at a store yesterday comparing the xoom and ipad's and the xoom is heavy, but the price on this is nice. The honeycomb os was nice, and as the market develops and more aps come out it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I'm hoping as more come out it keeps pressure on the lower end of the market price wise. It looks like this Acer tab is doing just that.

My biggest issue however remains ipad vs. an android based tablet.

I'll have to get my hands on this Acer and see how the weight feels.

[friendly]

Just curious what's the difference between this and the Asus Transformer which has a price of $399.

[TorontoColin]

Looks like it'll be $500 Canadian

[hugh]

Windows version denoted as W500 now on sale for those that are interested.

[Tikker]

Yup. The win7 version is interesting. Like to get hands on comparison between this and the transformer

[NineBall]

A cross-border markup of $50 isn't too bad on this. I'd still be getting it from the US myself (especially as it's available now instead of May 13) but I'm now thinking of the Transformer instead.

[frosty vibe]

I may just pick up one up in Vegas when I visit in June. Its interesting that Candian pricing is higher than US pricing given the high exchange rate for the past year.

[Veee]

Amazon.ca just dropped the price of the 32GB version to $506

[GSMfan]

With the exchange rate the way it is, and has been for awhile, it's ridiculous that Canadian prices are still higher.