Acer Iconia W700 Windows 8 tablet goes on sale later this month

Acer has announced in a press release that its upcoming Iconia W700 tablet will become commercially available in the United States on October 26th. Unveiled at this year’s Computex trade show, the powerful portable device is based on a Windows 8 operating system and will have a starting price of $800 (up to $1,000 depending on configuration; the W700P model with Win 8 Pro will reportedly set you back $1,050).

Just to jog your memory, the slate PC is equipped with an 11.6-inch IPS multitouch-enabled display of Full HD native resolution (1980-by-1080 pixels) and the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics processing unit. Furthermore, the W700 apparently offers a choice of third generation Intel chips and can be powered by up to an Intel Core i5-3317U ultra-low voltage CPU with two cores running at a frequency of 1.7GHz - 2.6GHz. Acer’s new tablet sports 4GB of internal memory and a solid-state drive with a storage capacity of up to 128GB.

According to the manufacturer, the device measures 0.5-inch thick and packs one USB 3.0 port, a front-facing HD web camera for video conferencing, Wireless LAN 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 modules, a micro HDMI interface and Dolby Home Theater v4 audio.  Reportedly, the latest addition to the Iconia family weighs 2.3lbs (1.04kg) with the standard built-in battery that last for around 8 hours on a single charge.

A unique feature of the W700 model is that it comes with a Bluetooth keyboard and a cradle-slash-docking station. The latter can be used to tilt the tablet up to 70 degrees for “enhanced viewing” or 20 degrees for “convenient touch”. Moreover, users can apparently take advantage of three full-sized USB ports that are integrated into the cradle.

Other specs include built-in stereo speakers, an HDMI-to-VGA adapter, G-Sensor, E-Compass and Gyro-Meter. The Taiwan-based company claims that the mobile device boots in 6 seconds and resumes from sleep in 1.5 seconds.

Source(s)