New York — Acer today launched several new touch-enabled mobile computers and tablets at a press event here.
Acer chairman and CEO J.T. Wang and company president Jim Wong unveiled the Aspire R7 laptop, Aspire P3 Ultrabook, Iconia A1 tablet, Aspire V5 mainstream laptop and the new V7 Ultrabook.
The centerpiece of the introduction was the Aspire R7. It features a 15.6-inch display connected by what Acer calls its Ezel Hinge. The Hinge allows the display to pop up and be used as a normal display, or be positioned within an 180-degree arc so even people opposite the user can see the screen.
The FullHD touchscreen R7 is part of Acer’s product development that places touch and type capability in its products, a concept it refers to as duality.
The R7 is being launched exclusively through Best Buy. It’s currently available for pre-order and will hit stores on May 17. It will carry a $999 suggested retail.
The R7 is powered by an Intel Core i5 processor and has 6GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive with 24GB solid-state drive (SSD) cache, HDMI port, three USB ports and an SD card reader.
The Aspire P3 Ultrabook is about 0.75 inches thick, weighs just more than three pounds and has an 11.6-inch touchscreen. Other features include a 60GB or 129GB SSD, Core i5 or Core i7 processor.
It is available immediately with a $799 starting price.
The Iconia A1 tablet features a 7.9-inch display and is designed to be used one-handed, Wong said. The device can be started up by touching the screen with five fingers, has a quad-core 1.2GHz processor and comes in 8GB or 16GB versions. The A1 will ship in June with the 16GB model priced at $199.
Acer closed out its introductions with the 11.6-, 14- and 15-inch V5 laptops and the 14- and 15-inch V7 Ultrabooks.
The V7 models feature touch displays; Core i3, i5 and i7 processors; and 1TB hard-disk storage or up to 256GB SSD storage.
The V5 models feature non-touch displays with the 14- and 15-inch models, but the 11-inch is touch-enabled. The two larger-screen models have the same feature sets as the V7 models, but the smaller is powered by a next-generation AMD dual- or quad-core processor and 500GB hard disk drive.
The V series ships in May with a starting price of $499. Breakout pricing for each SKU was not available.
The Aspire R7’s display can traverse 180 degrees.
