Acer Iconia Tab A500

-Hey. I'm Donald Bell and today we're taking a First Look at the Iconia Tab from ACER. This is a WiFi only contract-free tablet running Google's Honeycomb OS and priced attractively at $449. Honeycomb made its debut on the Motorola Xoom early in 2011 and we criticized the tablet for being a little too pricey and too bulky to compete with the iPad. With the Iconia Tab, Acer is at least answering one of our requests, pricing their tablet at $450 less than the WiFi on the Xoom while maintaining nearly all of its features. Like the Xoom, you get a 10.1-inch that's great for videos and web browsing. It has a built-in HDMI output from mirroring HD content on to your TV. You've got a 5-megapixel camera on the back, a 2-megapixel camera on the front; both of which can be used to catch over the included Google Talk app. The Android Honeycomb experience here is pretty much what you'd expect. ACER puts a few of their own bundled apps on the home screen, but if you don't like them, they're easy to clear off and replace with something else. The bad news is that ACER hasn't cut any of the bulk we saw on the Xoom. In fact, it's a tad heavier. And when you hold it up next to the slim-down iPad 2, the difference is dramatic. Still, we're happy to see Honeycomb reach a price below the iPad and hopefully this will be a trend that we'll keep seeing throughout the year. For cnet.com, I'm Donald Bell and this is the ACER Iconia Tab A500.