Acer Iconia Tab A510: How Does It Measure Up To The New 'IPad 3'?

Acer's Iconia Tab A510, running on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, is available for pre-sale today. How does it measure up to the new iPad, a.k.a. the 'iPad 3?'

The Iconia Tab A510, available in black and white, is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, the first quad-core processor tablet from Acer, and has a 10.1-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 by 800. It also has 4G LTE capability.

The tablet is an Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich device, which means the Iconia Tab A510 will come with all the latest features of the Android experience. Those features include a new user interface, resizable widgets and face recognition to unlock your device.

The new Acer Iconia Tab A510 will exceed the expectations of customers who are ready to embrace using their tablets for more fun, entertainment and a first-rate mobile gaming experience, said Paul Tayar, director of product marketing for connected devices for Acer America. Our second-generation Acer A510 builds on the success of its award-winning predecessor with notable improvements in performance, responsiveness and ease-of use, elevating it to the status of ultimate mobile companion. Plus, the tablet will really surprise people with its comprehensive suite of productivity apps that will enable them to remain productive and connected on-the-go.

Acer says the tablet's processor beefs up performance up to 2.6 times more than previous generation processors and up to three times the graphics performance.

The Iconia Tab A510 also comes with 1GB of standard memory and supports up to 32GB flash memory.

The Acer tablet, available for pre-order starting March 22, is priced at $449.99, which puts it $50 below the lowest priced new iPad.

For that price difference, it's difficult to go with the Iconia Tab A510 over the new iPad, with its brilliant retina display and access to a larger selection of apps via the Apple App Store.

Being an Android device, Iconia users will be limited to the apps available in Google Play, the new name for the Android Market. The selection and quality of apps just doesn't cut it when compared to the App Store.