Acer Iconia Tab A510: Tegra 3 Hits $450
by Jason Inofuentes on March 22, 2012 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Acer
- Mobile
- Tegra 3
- Android 4.0
- Tablets
- Iconia Tab
- A510
Asus's Transformer Prime just got some company. Available for pre-order today, the Acer Iconia Tab A510 brings the price of entry for a 10.1" Tegra 3-powered tablet down to a cool $449.99, $50 less than the similarly equipped Asus offering. Like the Prime the A510 features a 10.1" 1280x800 display, the 1.3 GHz Tegra 3 SoC with 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage expandable by microSD. The base battery life on the A510 is an impressive 36.26Whr, not quite as much as the new iPad, but somewhat higher than its prececessor and the Prime. That big battery does lead to a somewhat portly frame, with a thickness cresting a centimeter and weighing nearly 100g more than the Prime. The frame is similar to the A200 we saw in January, but is actually a little thinner and with a textured back for extra grip.
Android 4.0 is on order for software, complete with Acer's Ring UI, a relatively innocuous skin that mainly seeks to put your most commonly used apps in easy reach. When we took a look at the A500, we were pleased with its display quality, not quite IPS but great for a vanilla LCD; we hope we can expect more of the same from this display. Software pre-load includes the usual branded media players and print software, along with Polaris Office 3.5 for productivity. Gone though, is the full-sized USB port, replaced by microUSB, though it remains compatibile with portable HDD up to 2TB in size.
There's no shortage of options for tablet buyers right now, and everyday another pops up. But if performance, battery life and price are your main criteria, the A510 may just be the tablet for you. Pre-orders start today for $449.99 at your favorite e-tailers; no ship dates are available.
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djc208 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
And even with the revenue stream it's still not competing directly with this or the iPad. The Fire and Nooks are 7" vs 10", no cameras, no blue tooth. Limited access to apps running heavily custimized versions of Android. I don't think the fire even has an SD card slot.They're even more of a walled garden than the iPad. Which is the other reason they can hit those price points.
Tablets like this have a hard struggle between the people who don't need anything more than the Fire or Nook offer and the iPad. They're left competing for people who want more capability or size than the Nook & Fire but don't like Apple, or want to spend the money Apple wants for an iPad.
dagamer34 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Because selling a tablet at $200 means selling it for a loss. They are in no rush to race to the bottom to lose money.Taft12 - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
If this industry has taught us nothing over the last decade, if you're not racing to the bottom, you're not getting any sales.Another dud for Acer here (and as always, the merits of the product have almost nothing to do with it)
michael2k - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Apple proves otherwisevision33r - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
Right now no 8-10" tablet can charge more than $400, the average consumer is not going to buy Android Tab at that price range when many prior gen tabs are selling at $299 or less.Add to that you can get a new iPad 2 for $399 and $349 refurb, not many reasons to spend $400+ unless you are getting an iPad 3 with Retina for $500 and that premium price is well worth it for a super hires display.
Pretty soon used iPad 3 will go for $449.
Confusador - Thursday, March 22, 2012 - link
I'm excited about this, and it's not because of the price; it's the USB port, and specifically USB host mode. The other critical feature is the removable storage, but most Android devices have that. Very few have the ports I want, though, which gives Acer an edge as long as they stay committed to it. I only wish it could compete on screen resolution.If they ever do launch the A700, I'll buy it at almost any price.
agent2099 - Friday, March 23, 2012 - link
Acer has the pricing all wrong on this, for only $50 more you can get an iPad 3 with quadruple the resolution, better battery life, and probably better build quality. This tablet needs to be $350 to compete.TheJian - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
You're wrong. You can't get a 32GB model in ipad3 for $50 more, it's really $150 more for 32gb ($600!). Also, the graphics aren't any faster on the $150 more ipad3 because they are pushing far more pixels. It was REQUIRED to get faster graphics just to get the screen to not be a killer on performance. It was already stated before, it's merely the same as all the others even if it is 4x faster graphics (means nothing if I always have 4x more work to get done correct?).Nice pricing, Acer priced it fine for 2x storage of apple low end model (16GB shouldn't even be produced today). For anyone wanting great multitasking stuff Tegra 3 is great. However for the same reason if you didn't think ipad2 was good at multitasking, expect to say the exact thing about ipad3. It is NO better in this area than it's older cousin.
Odeen - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - link
"16GB shouldn't even be produced today"Wrong. 16gb is plenty for base storage when there's a MicroSD card slot available. 16gb becomes space for apps only, with all the media, pictures, movies, music, etc living on the cheap (and swappable) SD card.
Heck, with App2SD, even APPS can live on the SD card.
The thing is, until internal storage in a tablet/phone reaches price parity with SD cards, any tablet/phone with more than the base amount of storage will be a ripoff. The 16gb version of this, for $350, would be fantastic. Want more space? Pair with a 64gb MicroSDXC card on special at Adorama for $80. $430 for an 80GB tablet is fantastic!
For that matter, if I could get a 2gb version of this, for $250-$270, I'd jump on it. Again, bring my own storage, App2SD my apps to the memory card, and have a 64gb quad core tablet at half price of a 64gb iPad.
Volfan254 - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Strike 1: Apple refuses to add an expansion slotStrike 2: Apple refuses to add USB or any other port
Strike 3: It's Apple
You're out.