With the debut of the Iconia Tab A500, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Acer is the latest to throw its hat into the tablet ring.

As of Friday morning, the A500 is up for preorder on Best Buy’s web site for $450. It will be ready for purchase in Best Buy retail stores beginning April 24.

The tablet will run Android version 3.0 (Honeycomb) on its NVIDIA Tegra 250 1GHz dual-core processor, supported by a gig of RAM.

The price ranks in at just below the cheapest iPad 2, which costs $500 and is Wi-Fi only with 16GB of internal storage (just like the Iconia A500). At $600, Motorola’s WiFi-only Xoom remains the most expensive Honeycomb-powered tablet option (though the extra hundred bucks will buy you a full 32GB of internal storage, among other things). Acer plans to eventually release a 32GB model, although no details on this have been given.

Acer’s tablet won’t be competing with those in the 4G realm yet—the A500 will be available in a Wi-Fi version first, and a 4G version will eventually make its way to AT&T’s network.

The A500’s 10.1-inch display boasts a 1280×800 resolution ratio (equal to that of the Xoom, and better than the iPad 2). You can watch HD 720p video on the screen, or use the HDMI output to view stored media on external screens. A 5-megapixel rear facing camera comes for shooting photos and video, while the 2-megapixel front facing camera allows for video chat.

Like the other Android tablets to debut in 2011, the A500 will trail Google’s flagship Honeycomb device, Motorola’s Xoom, to market. Samsung’s currently available version of its seven-inch Galaxy Tab runs Android version 2.2—we won't see Honeycomb on a Samsung device until the 10.1-inch version ships (although delays have pushed back the larger version’s release).

And in what seems to be the beginning of a disturbing trend in tablet debuts, the A500 will support Flash eventually, but won’t ship with it. Motorola’s Xoom, which debuted six weeks ago, also launched without Flash, though a beta release is currently available for Honeycomb in the Android Market.

With the BlackBerry Playbook set to debut on April 19 and a number of offerings to follow, Acer’s preorder ploy is an attempt to push out the Iconia before other tablets hit the market.