Acer's new Aspire R13, pictured with the Acer Active Pen.
Acer’s new Aspire R13, pictured with the Acer Active Pen.

Acer Australia has officially announced the local availability of its unique Aspire R13 convertible Windows tablet/PC, which was recently honoured with a 2015 CES Innovation Award in the field of Computer Hardware and Components.

Available only from Harvey Norman at launch, the Aspire R13 starts at RRP $1,999.

The R13 stands out from the crowd because its instantly recognisable form factor can be manipulated into six district configurations, depending on how you want to interact with this 13.3-inch powerhouse.

There’s notebook mode, which is the traditional laptop style clamshell and ideal for productivity tasks; Ezel for web browsing; Stand for collaborative tasks and presentations; Pad for tablet use; Tent for when space is at a premium like on a plane or commuting; and Display for looking at photos, watching movies and gaming.

The Aspire R13 is 25.4 millimetres thin and weighs 1.5 kilograms. Consumers have a choice between the insanely good ‘super high resolution’ display option (2,560 x 1,440) or the everyday good Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) screen. Acer also has a stylus, the Acer Active Pen, available as an optional extra.

Acer is making the R13 available with both Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, with storage up to 1TB, comprised of two 512GB solid state drives and up to 8GB of memory.

UPDATE: We asked Acer to clarify Harvey Norman’s distribution deal regarding this product and the response was:

“The Harvey Norman exclusivity is for the life of the product and it has also been agreed that it will not be on Acer’s website, except if it falls under BYOD.”

BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device and refers to sales into the business customer market.

UPDATE #2: In response to the reader question below, Acer’s PR team has said product shipments arrived in the country last week and the R13 should be currently available.

This author is on Twitter: @Patrickavenell