Acer’s newest tablet, the 7-inch Iconia Tab A100, is the first of its size out of the gate to run Google’s made-for-tablets “Honeycomb” version of the Android operating system. There are two versions of the tablet available—a 16-gigabyte model with an MSRP of $350 and an 8-gigabyte model with an MSRP of $330—which should begin hitting retail stores shortly.
(VIDEO: Outrage! Acer Tablet Gets Priced Competitively)
Acer sent me a review unit this week, and while I haven’t played with it enough to make a thorough evaluation of it yet, its low price tag (I’d expect the 8-gigabyte version to hit $299 or less pretty quickly) married with its above-average hardware specs, new-ish operating system, and the fact that the 7-inch tablet arena doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of fierce competition right now may put the A100 at or near the top of a pretty short list.
Just some very quick first impressions: I like the size—it’s half an inch thick and weighs a shade under a pound—and the dual-core processor and one-gigabyte of RAM make everything pretty slick. The battery life leaves quite a bit to be desired—especially if you’re used to bigger 10-inch tablets—as it peters out at around four hours or so, depending on screen brightness and which applications you’re running. Acer claims a maximum of five hours.
Here’s a look at some of the early reviews from around the web: