The Acer Iconia Tab A100 has been a fan favorite around our offices, mostly because of Acer doing a stand-up job getting an Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) update out. The A100 was mostly a flop at its regular asking price, it has found new life as a budget tablet on the “refurbished” market.
We use refurbished in quotes, because Acer is merely price discriminating. Most of the refurbished units we’ve seen are new, rebadged stock. This allows them to still demand three-figure premiums for new units, but actually find market success selling units at rock-bottom prices.
Today however, Mac Connection has brought the A100 to a (pleasant) new low, under $100. For a high-quality refurbished tablet, it’s the lowest price we’ve ever seen in NVIDIA Tegra 2 trim. It is, in our opinion, the best tablet deal out there right now. The only better tablet deal we’ve ever seen, was the $149 Acer Iconia Tab A200 “refurbished” deal that uBid ran for mere minutes before selling out.
While there are many capable tablets under $100, none pack the Google Experience suite of apps, Android 4.0, and Tegra 2 in one package, other than this deal.
The tablet ships with Android 3.0, Honeycomb preloaded. However, when connected to Wi-Fi it will download a series of updates that bring it to Android 4.0.3.
It’s not clear if the A100 will receive an official Android 4.1, Jelly Bean upgrade. Acer has said that many of its tablets that were updated to Android 4.0, will be updated to Android 4.1, but has not said which models. However, since Android 4.0 and 4.1 share the same driver code, hackers have already released many stable Jelly Bean firmware updates for the A100.
Mac Connection – Acer Iconia Tab A100
Update: Mac Connection has pulled the product page from their site.
