This tablet has been in the rumor mill for a while now. Yesterday, Acer made their announcement. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is now official. Why didn’t they call it a Chrometab? They should have talked to me first…
This is a 9.7 inch tablet that runs Chrome OS and Android apps. The screen is a 2048×1536 pixel IPS display (264 ppi) with both a Wacom and capacitive sensor on the screen. This means you can use a Wacom stylus (with pressure sensitivity) and touch.
Most of the press information centers around how this tablet targets the educational market. I think it will be great for students, but I also think it will be great for the rest of us as well.
This device is 6.78 x 9.38 x 0.39 inches and weighs 1.21 lbs (that is 172.2 x 238.2 x 9.98 mm and 550g for the metrically inclined). It is trimmed with a cobalt blue case.
The Tab 10 offers front (2MP) and rear (5MP) cameras. I know a lot of people will complain about the low pixel count on the cameras. But, really, how many people need images larger than this? Your social media posts are small anyway. These cameras are fine for most applications.
The Tab 10 stylus works with many Android apps for drawing, writing, and marking up documents. It should work with web apps as well, there are APIs for this. The stylus does use a battery, and there is a compartment in the tablet to store the stylus. I can’t believe there are so many stylus-enabled devices that don’t have a place to store the stylus. This is a good feature.
Acer rates the Tab 10 at 9 hours of use. There is also mention of “wireless carts”, so it might have wireless charging. Wouldn’t that be great?
The TAB 10 is powered by an OP1 processor with a dual-core Cortex-A72 and a quad-core Cortext-A53, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. You will stay connected with 2×2 MIMO 802.11 ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1. In addition there is a USB 3.1 Type-C connector for charging, data transfer, and connection to an external display. There is a combo headphone/microphone jack (a surprise in a world trying to eliminate these) and a MicroSD card reader.
Having a headset jack could mean this tablet would allow me to do digital modes in the field…KX3, audio cable, FT8, WSPR, rig control, etc. This could be really fun. I use my phone now, but a larger screen would be nice. Yes, this is a ham radio thing…
The Chromebook Tab 10’s release date in North America is in April at an expected price of $329.
All information in this article is from a press release, I did not receive any compensation for this article. That being said, Acer, I would be very excited to do a review if you were to send me an eval unit for a couple of weeks.
You can get more information about this tablet at the Acer website.
At this point, there is no mention of accessories