Acer has announced a price reduction and an update for its Iconia A1 Android tablet, a move that the company hopes will provide customers with a low-cost premium tablet option that stands out from other devices.

The 7.9-inch tablet, the same size as the iPad Mini, was unveiled on Friday featuring the Clover Trail X86 Intel Atom’s 1.6-GHz processor and is priced at $149. The A1 tablet features 1GB of RAM and a bright IPS display with 1024 by 768 resolution, so not quite full 1080p HD quality. It has dual speakers for improved stereo making listening to music and watching movies a more immersive user experience.

Paul Taylor, the director of product marketing, stated that the tablet delivers outstanding performance and battery life and a superior aluminium metal finish that could allows it to compete with other tablets of the same class. It seems that Acer is going after consumers who want a bargain on value-oriented products with this latest unveiling.

Most Android applications are created for ARM and it’s unusual to see Intel Atom processors for Android at such low prices, so some are concerned that performance issues in certain areas could be a problem with the Iconia A1. While Acer gives no guarantee that the tablet can run smoothly on Windows 8 or Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora, the possibility is there however.

With its 7.9-inch screen, 4:3 display and near identical style to iPad mini, the Iconia A1 is apparently a direct iPad competitor with resolution very similar to the original iPad mini. The tablet’s low cost, Android OS and 16-GB of internal storage brings it very close to the Nexus 7 as well.

It is clear that the X86 processor could be the unique selling point and differentiation from Asus and Google’s 7-inch tablets. Of course, the experience of using a $299 iPad and a $149 Iconia A1 will be quite different though. The 2013 version of the Nexus 7 has been selling for $199 lately which is likely to make things more challenging for Acer to sell the Iconia A1 at only $50 less.