Acer announces quad-core tablet with 12-hour battery

Starting at $449.99, the Iconia Tab A510 will be one of the most powerful and longest-lasting. It’s also branded with a 2012 Olympic Games logo.

 

Acer today has officially took the wraps off its first quad-core tablet in Canada and the U.S.

Dubbed the Acer Iconia Tab A510, this 10.1-inch touchscreen tablet will feature an NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor (formerly codenamed Project Kal-El), designed for serious performance, especially for memory-intensive tasks, like video editing and online gaming – plus it offers hardware-accelerated support for Adobe Flash 11 (which comes preinstalled on the tablet). In fact, Acer says the beefy CPU and 1GB of system memory (RAM) is complimented by a high-performance 12-Core GeForce NVIDIA graphics processing unit (GPU). This puppy will be able to handle a lot more than Angry Birds in Space.

The processing power also speeds up everyday applications like web browsing, email, music playback or flipping through ebooks, plus multiple cores also helps smooth out multitasking between open apps and extends battery life to an industry-leading 12 hours on a single charge (the iPad, by comparison, leads the pack today at up to 10 hours). It also doesn’t hurt that it’s a 9800mAh battery, which is one of the highest capacities in the industry.

With all this power and performance, it’s no wonder the Acer Iconia Tab A510 is a special Olympic Games Tablet Edition of the Acer Iconia Tab line, featuring an Olympic logo on the back of the silver or black chassis.

The Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) tablet was also designed as a productivity tool as it’ll ship with the full Polaris Office 3.5 suite — including apps for word processing, spreadsheet creation and presentations — which is compatible with Microsoft Office files. The Acer android  tablet will also include Acer Print, allowing users to print wirelessly to a wide range of printers.

Speaking of wireless, while there isn’t a 3G/4G option, the Acer Iconia Tab A510 includes 802.11a/b/g/n wireless (Wi-Fi) technology and integrated Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (enhanced data rate) connectivity.

The 1.5-pound tablet boasts a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video recording – though Acer hasn’t said whether it’s 720p or 1080p – and a 1-megapixel front-facing camera for video calling.

Other features includes a WXGA (1280×800 resolution) HD display with 16:10 aspect ratio, Dolby Mobile 3 audio, HDMI port, micro USB 2.0 port and a microSD card slot to expand the tablet’s 32GB internal flash memory up to 32GB, per card.

While the Iconia Tab A510 is now available for pre-order, Acer did not specify when it would start shipping the unit. [UPDATE: Acer says the tablet will begin shipping by mid-April]. But if the specs are any indication, to say this tablet looks promising would be a serious understatement.