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Acer's Windows-powered Iconia W500 up for pre-order for $549, ships April 15th
Acer already announced UK pricing for the Windows 7 and Android Honeycomb versions of its Iconia Tab, and now it's ready to take both stateside. Days after Best Buy started taking pre-orders for the Android 3.0-powered Iconia Tab A500, the Windows-based W500 has shown up on B&H's site for $549. Like its cousin, the W500 has a 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, HDMI-out and dual cameras, though it steps up to 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics, and a 1GHz Ontario (C-50) AMD Fusion APU. It also comes with a keyboard dock, putting it in the same price range as ASUS's Android-based Eee Transformer, which costs less but doesn't include its similar-looking keyboard. Acer rates the W500's three-cell battery at up to six hours -- a far cry from the iPad's promised 10-hours and, perhaps, a good reason to wait for slates featuring that lower-power Fusion APU AMD's been shopping around to tablet makers. B&H says it'll ship starting April 15th, but head on over to its website if you're psyched enough to place an order now. Or you can keep saving your pennies for Acer's other Iconia.
Packard Bell debuts Liberty Tab Honeycomb tablet, clearly adores freedom
You didn't think that Acer wouldn't be sharing some of its new tablets with its still-kicking Packard Bell subsidiary, did you? The latter has now debuted the Liberty Tab, its own spin on Acer's Iconia Tab A500. As you might expect, however, there aren't many differences beyond the name, with this one packing the same styling, 10-inch screen, Tegra 2 processor, dual cameras, and Honeycomb OS as its more widely-available counterpart. Launch details are still a bit iffy, but you can apparently expect this one to hit Europe sometime in June, with pricing to vary by country. Head on past the break for a hands-on video courtesy of Notebook Italia. [Thanks, Marco]
Acer's Iconia Tab A500 soaks up the WiFi rays, hits shelves April 24th for $450
Ladies and gentlemen, the days of spending $600 for an Android Honeycomb tablet are nearly done -- on April 24th, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 will wash that price away with waves of brushed aluminum. That's when the WiFi-only version of Acer's Android 3.0 tablet will hit Best Buy and online retail for $450 sans contract, but with the same basic raft of specs as the WiFi-only Motorola Xoom: a dual-core 1GHz Tegra 250 SOC, a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 LCD screen, 1GB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera around back and a 2 megapixel imager up front, HDMI-out, not to mention a pair of 3260mAh batteries that Acer claims are capable of eight full hours of life while playing HD video. Sure, it's a wee bit thicker and heavier and only sports half the flash storage (16GB), too, but if you're attracted to shiny things, look for our review in the coming weeks -- or wait until this summer to get one with AT&T. PR after the break. Update: As Acer mentioned in its press release, pre-orders for the device are beginning exclusively at Best Buy today, and you can now get your order in online. %Gallery-120664%
Acer's 7-inch Iconia Tab A100 priced at £300 in UK, launching April 20th
Boy oh boy, these Taiwanese companies are seriously gunning to take the bottom out of the Honeycomb tablet market. After we saw ASUS stride forward with very competitive pricing on its 10-inch Eee Pad Transformer, we're now being treated to Acer's riposte, an eminently reasonable £300 ($483) price tag attached to its 7-inch Iconia Tab. Nothing is really skimped on here, you get the dual-core Tegra 2 and Android 3.0 one-two punch of hardware and software that's become so popular lately, and of course the RAM is 512MB, not KB as indicated on Amazon's listing. Perhaps the 8GB of storage will be a little on the light side, but given the price, we consider that a most forgivable shortcoming. Amazon notes the release date as April 20th in the UK and we doubt the rest of the world will have to wait much longer either.
Acer slaps $1,200 price tag on dual-screen Iconia-6120 touchbook, lets US and Canada pre-order
Acer's had its fair share of Iconia's land in the past few months, but none are as breathtaking (and potentially world-changing) as the Iconia-6120. Said machine was priced at €1,499 earlier in the year, but that doesn't mean an awful lot to folks situated in America and the Great White North. As of today, consumers in both of those nations have a price and release date to ponder, with $1,199.99 (both US and CAD) netting you a touchbook with two 14-inch Gorilla Glass touchpanels, a Core i5 CPU, 4GB of memory, integrated Intel HD graphics and a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. You'll also get USB 3.0 support, a 640GB hard drive, a 1.3 megapixel camera, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, an HDMI output, gigabit Ethernet, a chassis that weighs in at 5.95 pounds and a battery that'll probably sputter along for nine or ten minutes (on a good day). Lookin' to dive right in? Amazon, as well as "other" fine e-tailers, should be taking orders momentarily. %Gallery-119891%
Acer announces UK Iconia Tab pricing: Windows or Android starting at £449
There's still no official word on pricing for the eventual US release, but Acer has now finally confirmed the UK pricing for its new Iconia Tab series of tablets. The WiFi-only versions of both the Windows 7-based Iconia Tab W500 and Android-based A500 will demand £449 apiece (or about $720) when they launch in the UK on April 8th, while the 3G-equipped W500 will set you back £529, or roughly $850 -- there's curiously no pricing for the 3G version of the A500 at the moment. Also available at the same time is a keyboard dock that will set you back £90 on its own or £529 in a bundle, and you can look for the smaller 7-inch A100 and W100 models to follow in May, or possibly later -- apparently with €349 price tag, if recent retailer pricing is any indication.
AT&T nabs Acer Iconia Tab A501, expect it in the summer months
We were pretty sure Acer's Iconia Tab would be riding Big Red -- you know, given the LTE modem and Verizon apps on board -- but it looks like the company will also support America's GSM juggernaut with a "4G" radio of some sort. AT&T just announced that the Acer Iconia Tab A501 will bring the 10.1-inch Honeycomb form factor and dual-core 1GHz Tegra 250 processor to its network sometime in Q2, giving the carrier a Android rival to Sprint's HTC EVO View 4G, T-Mobile's LG G-Slate, and of course Verizon's Motorola Xoom. How many Benjamins will it take to bring one home? Now that, my friends, is the question. You can join us in failing to find the answer in a press release below.
Staples leak reveals April / June ship dates for Acer Iconia Tab, Toshiba tablet
Not to say Staples' release schedule is the be-all-end-all resource when it comes to US availability, but we'll take any guidance we can get when it comes to the two mystery products tucked beside Dell's Streak and Apple's iPad 2. According to this tablet lineup, Acer's Iconia Tab will be hitting shelves for an undisclosed rate at the end of April, while the still unnamed Toshiba tablet gets loosed in mid-June. We'll feel a lot better about the wait once these things are priced, but for now, you've got two more reasons to rush the rest of winter away -- assuming you're north of the Mason-Dixon, of course.
Staples' slate of slates leaks out, corroborates Samsung 8.9-incher and the HP Opal?
For over a month, we've held onto a document -- allegedly a Staples tablet guide -- that's been looking increasingly wrong as the days fly by. Tablet release dates were too soon, and prices were far too high, which made us think it was either a forgery or sorely out of date. (Curious? See our copy after the break.) This week, however, Droid-Life published a far more likely looking copy of the very same thing, which appears to be both quite recent and fairly interesting. You'll see that Samsung's 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab makes a cameo, as does the 7-inch HP Opal we told you about early this year, and both the BlackBerry PlayBook and Dell Streak 7's appearances align with recent rumors we've seen. The only outlier is an April release date for the Motorola Xoom WiFi, which ads peg for March 27th. The rest is practically a who's who of upcoming tablets, so we'll spare you the full churn of the rumor mill. If you want to know what we know about the lot, simply refer to our coverage below. Update: Oh, and that HTC tablet is listed as a 10-inch one -- could it be the EVO View we've been waiting for? [Thanks, Morgan] Read - Dell Streak 10 Read - Acer Iconia Tab Read - Toshiba's unnamed Tegra 2 / Honeycomb tablet Read - HP TouchPad [Thanks, Billy F.]
Acer Iconia Windows 7 tablet hands-on
Acer has made something very clear here at CES -- it's going to enter the tablet market much like it entered the netbook one, with lots of options. In addition to the Android tablets (it's got 4.8-, 7-, and 10-inch versions) and the dual-screen Iconia, the company will be bringing its 10.1-inch Windows 7 tablet to the US market for about $550 in the coming months. Just as we had heard, the tablet will use AMD's Fusion platform and will come with a keyboard dock. We got a chance to check out the whole package and the dock / tablet fit together in a unique fashion -- the tablet and keyboard are surrounded by magnetic borders that latch onto each other. When you pull 'em apart you can attach the tablet via USB to the keyboard or just use it on its own. The whole attachment mechanism felt very flimsy on the two units we saw at the show and the entire thing felt very top heavy when docked. The chiclet keyboard is different from Acer's typical variety, but we really like the addition of the pointing stick in the center for navigating Windows 7. We didn't get to spend too much with the working unit but we were able to fire up Engadget in Internet Explorer 9 and scroll down the page rather smoothly. It's unclear whether Acer will be using a skin on top of Windows 7 since we saw it on display in Microsoft's booth and all of those tablets were running stock Windows. It should be rather interesting to see how AMD's Fusion platform performs in a tablet and how it impacts the battery life, but until we can bring you a full review we leave you with the gallery below. %Gallery-113472%
Eyes-on: Verizon LTE gaming and live TV on the Acer Iconia Tab (video)
We said we'd bring you an Verizon LTE speed test on the Acer Iconia Tab A500, but we can give you better than that -- here's a test of latency in cross-platform online multiplayer gaming and a FiOS app that streams live television. Hosting a game of Dungeon Defenders on an Alienware M11x laptop (also connected to LTE), Verizon joined the party with an Acer Iconia Tab, and a pair of the slates were able to go head-to-head in a peer-to-peer Asphalt 5 6 race over LTE as well. What's more, the carrier showed us an experimental version of its FiOS DVR Manager app, which streamed live television to the Iconia over LTE -- similar to what we saw on the iPad. Unlike the games, it was choppy and took some time to cache, but we'll have to see what it's like when (or if) it's finalized. Of course, if you had just clicked the play button on the above video instead of reading these words, you'd already know all that. %Gallery-113319%
Acer Iconia Tab A500 first hands-on! (update: video)
Acer's ten-inch Tegra 2 tablet with Verizon LTE? You're looking at it right now, courtesy of the NVIDIA booth at CES 2011's Digital Experience show. It's just the same engineering prototype with an early build of Android 2.2 we've seen before -- it'll run Honeycomb at launch -- but this time, we got to touch. The hardware seriously feels final, with a solid metal case and a supremely responsive touchscreen that tracks a full ten points of contact. There's an interesting array of ports, too, with a full-sized USB port (as well as micro-USB) on one side and a dedicated charging socket too, as well as a dock connector on the bottom. What's missing are the standard Android Home, Menu and Back buttons, as instead of those, you simply swipe the lower right corner of the screen to bring up a tiny pane of virtual alternatives. No LTE connectivity to be found at Digital Experience, we're afraid, so we'll have to bring you speed tests another day -- but we'll have video up soon. For now, peep the gallery below. Update: Video after the break! %Gallery-112872%
Acer announces Iconia Tab A500 10-inch Android tablet with LTE
Woah, Acer just dropped news on a new Iconia device, except this one is all tablet. The Iconia Tab A500 has Android (no version specified) with the "Acer UI 4.5" on top, and Verizon 4G LTE inside. There's a 10.1-inch "10 point multitouch" screen, Tegra 2, and a gyroscope, which Acer claims should position the tablet perfectly for games. You can also output 1080p video over the built-in HDMI port, but there's no word on the screen's actual resolution. We also don't have any word on a price or a release date, and Acer hasn't even supplied any photos of the device yet, but we played with a 10.1-inch Android tablet from Acer back in November (pictured), and we have to assume this is the same one. Updated: Confirmed. This is the same 10-inch tablet we saw in November. We hear it will be displayed at Verizon's booth so we'll be scouting it out and bringing you impressions sometime soon.
