Acer's Iconia Tab A200, with 10.1-inch screen, out Jan. 15

Jan. 5, 2012, 11:11 AM EST

By Suzanne Choney

Acer Thursday unveiled that its Android-based Iconia Tab A200, a tablet with a 10.1-inch display, will be available in U.S. stores Jan. 15. The tablet comes in a 16GB, Wi-Fi only version ($350), or an 8GB Wi-Fi only model ($330).

The A200 is a solid addition to Acer's existing tablet lineup, which includes the 7-inch Iconia Tab A100, which weighs less than a pound.

The cost of the A200 shows how aggressively prices are dropping in the tablet market: It's the same as Acer has charged for the smaller A100 tablets, though that one comes with front- and rear-facing cameras. (The A200 has only a front-facing camera, for low-resolution video conferencing.)

The tablet — at 1.5 pounds — is a bit heftier than Apple's iPad 2 (1.33 pounds), which has a 9.7-inch display.

The A200 uses Nvidia's 1 GHz Tegra 2 dual-core mobile processor and integrated GeForce graphics processing unit "that allows users to enjoy HD gaming, 1080p video, Flash-based applications, faster browsing and multitasking," Acer says. (The iPad 2 has Apple's own 1 GHz, dual-core A5 processor.)

While the A200 comes with the Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) operating system, Acer says tablet buyers will be able to upgrade to Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, when it becomes available in February, with the update pushed to users.

The tablet comes in either "Titanium Gray" or "Metallic Red." Here's the back of the tablet, in Metallic Red:

Among the A200's specs:

WXGA HD multi-touch display (1280 x 800) resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio
2 MP front-facing camera
Estimated 8 hours of battery life
1,024 MB DDR2 memory
One Micro-USB 2.0 port
One USB 2.0 Port 1
MicroSD memory slot, taking SD cards of up to 32GB
3.5mm combo jack (headphone/speaker)

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