Acer Iconia W700 review: Tablet, meet desktop - aleshirehadly1981

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Functions as both pad of paper and desktop
• Fast, mobile dock

Cons

• Heavy for a pad of paper; flyspeck for a desktop
• Necessarily a mouse

Our Verdict

Acer's ready-made a decent first essay at tablet/desktop convergence with the W700, but it's not rather there yet.

Windows 8 opens up some interesting purpose possibilities for computing devices, and Acer's Iconia W700 epitomizes thehybrid background/tablet or modular teeny-weeny PC possibility. The W700 can be used as a normal Windows 8 tablet, but ships with a docking station/stand and Bluetooth keyboard that allow you to function information technology Eastern Samoa you would a normal touchscreen PC. Information technology's a good idea that, unfortunately, ISN't perfectly implemented.

PCWorld earlier took a close view an engineering sample of the W700. This review is based on shipping hardware.

Design and Usableness

Measurement 11.6-inches wide by 7.5-inches tall and a trifle less than a half-edge thick, the tablet portion of the W700 is bigger than average. Deliberation in at 2.1 pounds, this is not a pad of paper that is easy to hold for big periods, so rest IT on your stomach if you plan to read War and Peace treaty.

The W700 controls are the acceptable Windows pill variety. Happening the word-perfect side is the superpowe button and rocker volume control. On the front, there's the Windows 8 button for switching between the Tube interface and desktop mode.

The docking station/pedestal enclosed with the W700 lets you stead the tablet on a flat surface in either landscape painting operating theater portrayal predilection. There's a separate kickstand that give the axe be fitted three ways: cardinal in landscape mode at either a steep operating theater shallow angle (in relation to the supporting control surface), Beaver State in portrait mode at a steep slant. It's both more versatile and less convenient than the assembled-in kickstand integrated into Microsoft's Surface tablets. The docking station has a power jack and three USB 3.0 ports, but the USB ports are placed too neighboring the lip they sit behind and don't have enough breathing way to accommodate bulky devices. For example, I could non apply two of my thicker USB flashy drives in said ports.

The W700 ships with a Bluetooth keyboard but no mouse, a bounce of faith on the part of Acer that everyone will want to use the ten-point touchscreen exclusively. The keyboard is precise usable, but a little modest for my tastes. A keyboard more in line with the width of the W700 in its docking station might take up more ocular appeal and allow for a numeric computer keyboard.

While the Iconia W700 is comparatively micro and portable, it's non going to travel equally easily as a collected laptop. The five separate components (the tablet, docking base, keyboard, power supply, and the kickstand) are a lot to keep track of and Acer supplies no special case to organize it. Also, the kickstand doesn't fold and is rather bunglesome to pack. If you're substantially orderly, traveling with the W700 won't be a problem. All in all, the design is improved suited to small offices and residence hall rooms than as a travel fellow traveler.

I'm not usually one to kvetch about looks, but while the W700 tablet is titled nicely sufficiency, the dockage and keyboard have a bit of a cheap look. Given the Price, we should expect better.

Features

The Iconia W700's hardware features are pinnacle-notch. The $999, W700-6465 configuration we tested is steam-powered by an Intel Core i5-3317U, 4GB of system memory, and a Toshiba 128GB SSD. Knock hit $100 for the W700-6691 with a smaller 64GB SSD, and knock about other $100 off if you can accept a slower Core i3-3217U CPU (the W700-6607). Hyperkinetic syndrome $50 to our unit and you obtain the W700P-6821 with Windows 8 Pro and an lengthy biennial guarantee. The standard OS is Windows 8 and the standard warranty is one year.

All units sport a mini-HDMI slot for video end product and presentations to external displays, and a USB 3.0 port wine for lading and saving information, etc. There are also a rear-facing 1080p television camera for taking pictures and video, and a forward-cladding 720p Webcam for conferencing and the like. The Wisconsin-Fi is two-fold-lo 802.11 a/b/g/n and the Bluetooth is standard 4.0.

Indefinite of the W700's major strengths is its 11.6-inch, 1920 by 1080 resolution display that renders video (including 1080p) very nicely so. Text and everything else is almost equally smooth as with a Retina display. Just at just all over 11 inches, those with weaker eyes might privation to increase the size of icons, text edition, and the like to 150 percent normal size. This also tends to make the switch between Subway and the classic desktop less cacophonous.

Performance

The Iconia W700-6465 inside-out in a lively 63 score on our WorldBench 8 test suite. That's non bad, but Sir Thomas More brilliant is the building block's mere 6.7 second boot time, the fastest we've yet seen. The battery lasted just over 6 hours in our tests, which is quite good for a unit with a high-resolution sieve and high-grade components. Gaming frame rates from the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics are nongranular for lower resolutions (mayhap busy 1280 by 768), but not the W700's full 1920 away 1080 resolution.

The Tail Job

The Iconia W700 is a crossbreed, and hybrids normally break off as either an enlightened merger of technology, or an dissatisfactory via media. Unfortunately, the W700 represents too overmuch of the last mentioned. The pad of paper itself is workable, and the accoutrements show the source of a good idea, merely the theme of a hybrid PC can (and should) be ameliorate realized.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/456040/acer-iconia-w700-review-tablet-meet-desktop.html

Posted by: aleshirehadly1981.blogspot.com

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