A slew of hardware makers that didn’t start out as online bookstores—including Acer, Samsung, and Toshiba—debuted 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablets just in time for Amazon’s Kindle Fire to steal their thunder. The apparent goal: to discover if anyone is actually interested in 7-inch tablets. Acer’s Iconia Tab A100 serves as our guinea pig for this form factor. Like most Honeycomb tablets to date, the Iconia A100 is based on Nvidia’s 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, coupled with GeForce graphics and 1GB RAM. The multitouch LCD retains the 16:9 aspect ratio that other Android tablets use, but in WXGA HD resolution (1024x600). The Iconia A100’s display exhibits excellent black levels and pleasantly accurate color and detail, but it’s not nearly as lusciously detailed and vibrant as the Asus Eee Pad Slider. With its ample CPU and graphics power, the Iconia A100 measures up to other top-performing slates in terms of screen swipes and redraws. We did, however, detect an ever-so-slight latency in its touch-screen responsiveness as compared to other tablets. Processor-hungry games such as Pinball HD and Sprinkle looked great on the Iconia A100, and gameplay didn’t suffer at all from the smaller screen.