The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is the first tablet tablet to ship with Chrome OS… but it’s easy to think of this as an Android tablet that just happens to be able to run the desktop version of Google’s chrome web browser.

It supports the Google Play Store and Android apps, allowing the Chromebook Tab 10 to do just about everything an Android tablet can… and then some.

Acer introduced the tablet in March, but the company is initially targeting the education market, so I got my first chance to spend a few minutes with a demo unit at Acer’s press event in New York today. It’s a nice little device, particularly for the price: it sells for $329.

The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 features a 9.7 inch, 2048 x 1536 pixel display, a Rockchip OP1 processor, a 4GB of RAM, 32GB of eMMC storage, and support for 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1.

It also comes with a Wacom pen that hangs out in a slot in the tablet when it’s not in use. When you remove it from its hiding place, the tablet notices and pops up a menu asking if you’d like to take a screenshot, open a note-taking app, or perform other actions that you might need a pen for.

There’s a 5MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. They’re nothing to write home about. The back of the tablet is plastic, with a ridged design that seems like it’ll probably be somewhat fingerprint resistant.

By computer standards, the Chromebook Tab 10 doesn’t have a lot of ports: there’s a single USB 3.1 Type-C port, a headset jack, and a microSD card reader. But those last two are things you can’t take for granted on modern phones, so it’s nice to see them in a tablet, I guess.

The tablet measures 9.4″ x 6.8″ x 0.4″ and weighs about 1.2 pounds.

Acer currently has no plans to offer an official keyboard for the Chromebook Tab 10, which makes the use of the word “book” in the name seem strange. But there’s nothing stopping you from using your own wired or wireless keyboard of choice.

I’d like to see Acer target the consumer market with a similar device… but I suspect we’ll have to see how the tablet is received in the education space before the company decides whether to do that.

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10 replies on “Hands-on with the Acer Chromebook Tab 10”

  1. if only i could put chromeos on a iPad cse it is much better quality at $329

    1. We ordered a test model for the company as soon as they were posted with our supplier (in April) and we still don’t have one. There apparently have been some production delays. We’re supposed to be expecting ours mid-July now, but we’ll see…

  2. Ok guys here is my question. What’s is the advantage of this device? what can I do with a chrome os tablet that I can’t do with an android tablet?
    Not trying to be a smart a** here. I’m just trying to figure the purpose of this device.
    Thanks

    1. Quite a few things actually…
      1. A full desktop version of Chrome with support for extensions. (Android Chrome is simply a mobile browser)
      2. The web versions of MS Office are far superior to the native Android version.
      3. There are some moderate to advanced function chromeOS apps that have no Android equivalent.
      (just 3 off the top of my head)

      This chromebook tab 10 looks like a very worthy competitor to the 2018 iPad, and in some respect better than it. But because most big names have been out of the Android tablet market for quite a while, the quality of tablet-optimized Android apps has suffered. A little too little, too late, IMO.

  3. Recently got the PlayStore on my laptop, but the Android app implementation is ROUGH at best. The apps are blurry, laggy, resize weird, crash, poor touchpad support, & so much more. The potential is there, but it’s obvious that it is a long ways away. It makes the Windows 10 experience feel 1000x times more polished, and Apple would have never released something so unprofessional. The good news is that I now appreciate the much better webapp experience, I have uninstalled all of their Android app counterparts.

    Google was onto something good with ChromeOS, small/simple/fast. It seems like with their Dev support that they could have pushed for native app development instead of cutting corners by porting Android apps. As it stands now you just have a big bloated chuggy blob slapped onto a fast elegant Desktop-lite environment.

    Hopefully PWA’s will solve this mess that Google has created.

  4. Could be an interesting device. I’ve hated my Chromebook experiences in the past, but that’s because I’m a power user that tried to do desktop things that ChromeOS can’t do very well.

    But a tablet… I don’t use tablets in the same way. This could potentially be a viable tablet. And the built-in stylus is a nice touch.

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