Apple iPad 3: Buy an Acer Iconia Tab A200 or Wait for iPad 3?

Apple's iPad 3 will be here before you know it, but if you don't want to wait another six weeks for it, consider the Acer Iconia Tab A200. It's a brand new 10.1-inch Android tablet, and Best Buy is selling the 16 gigabyte variant right now for $350. That makes it one of the best tablet deals going right now. Additionally, it will get the Android 4.0 update when Acer starts rolling it out to their products. Acer has not announced any timetable for when that might happen. However, there are only two other tablets out there running the new system; the Motorola Xoom and Asus Transformer Prime.

There's no doubt the new iPad will be a great device, but it's also likely to debut at $500 or more. It should come out with a new QXGA 2048x1536p HD resolution display, 4G LTE connectivity and Siri voice recognition. This has not been confirmed by Apple, but then again, we don't even know when iPad 3 will launch, so it's just a guess. An announcement could come at the end of February during the Mobile World Congress, but that's not confirmed either.

Besides the new features, iPad 3 should include a super-thin and very stylish, understated design. Not to mention all the beautiful apps made just for iPad in the App Store. Compared to the iPad, the Acer Iconia Tab A200 is noticeably thicker, but part of that is due to its inclusion of a full-size USB 2.0 port on the left-hand side. Furthermore, Acer likely saved a few dollars on building the A200 by not trying to make it the thinnest on the market, and those savings may have helped keep the price down for buyers. The A200 also includes a 1280x800p WXGA touchscreen display, full gigabyte of memory, microSD card slot, bluetooth connectivity and is Wi-Fi only.

The drawbacks are there is no rear-facing camera and no HDMI port. The camera may not matter to many people, but no HDMI could be a deal breaker if you like streaming movies to your HDTV. So, depending on what you do with your device, the A200 could be the perfect device. It would be great for students or even as a first tablet purchase for a non-tech oriented person. But, if you want the latest and greatest, you'll have to wait at least another six weeks for the iPad 3. Tell us in the comments if you've used an Acer tablet or laptop before and what you think of them.

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