Apr 8, 2011 16:11 GMT  ·  By

Today, Acer America and Best Buy announced the pre-order availability in the United States of the Acer Iconia Tab A500 tablet PC exclusively via the retailer's website.

Starting today, users in the country interested in the purchase of the new device would be able to reserve it from Best Buy's website, while being able to do so through retailer's stores starting with April 14th.

The duo also announced that the Acer Iconia Tab A500 with WiFi should become available for purchase in the United States starting with April 24th, and that it would sport a price tag of $449.99, contract free.

The new Iconia Tab A500 is the first tablet PC from the company to sport a 10.1-inch touchscreen display, and to run under Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) operating system.

“Staying connected and entertained are firmly embedded as a part of our everyday lives – and the Acer Iconia Tab A500 does this and so much more in a performance-minded, sleek and stylish design,” said Sumit Agnihotry, vice president of product marketing, Acer America.

“This tablet absolutely delivers on the expectation that customers can be entertained, stay in touch with family, friends, colleagues and social networks, as well as keep up on the world around them in a way that is intuitive and fluid, and also incredibly enjoyable.”

The new device sports an NVIDIA Tegra 250 1GHz dual-core processor inside, complemented by 1GB of RAM and an integrated GeForce GPU for enhanced multimedia capabilities, 1080p video recording, HD gaming, and impressively fast browsing.

In addition to the large 10.1-inch 1280×800 TFT WXGA screen with multi-touch capabilities, the device comes with built-in HDMI port, 5MP rear-facing camera, 2MP fixed-focused front-facing webcam, or 16GB of flash memory, with a microSD memory card slot with support 32GB more.

It also includes Books eReading apps for enjoying eBooks, Zinio app for reading full-color digital magazines, games like Need for Speed: Shift, or Let's Golf, and access to various applications available from the Android Market.

Best Buy’s vice president of computing, Jason Bonfig, stated, “Tablets are paving the way for people to enjoy a whole new form factor in entertainment and connection. We’re pleased to have Acer join our tablet selection and to offer our customers an opportunity to try this tablet out for themselves at any Best Buy store.”

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Acer Iconia Tab A500
Acer Iconia Tab A500
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