Acer Iconia W3

Despite what Microsoft says, Windows 8 devices aren't flying off the shelves right now, with the tablet market proving to be a particularly tough nut to crack.
Enter Acer and its newly-unveiled 8.1-inch Windows 8 microslab. Yes, this is the smallest tablet to squeeze in the full Windows 8 experience, and it doesn't do a bad job of it either considering that it's a fair bit more power-intensive than its direct rivals - the iPad mini and Nexus 7 - and yet just about as portable

Design

To pack in that full PC experience, the slate comes bundled with an easily-integrated Bluetooth keyboard. All you do is simply slot the tablet into the dock's rubber hold and you're away. No awkwardly missing dock connectors around here.
Turn the dock over and the tablet can slot securely into the back, face down, turning the keyboard into a convenient cover when carrying it around. Protection sorted.

Slips in nicely

As for the tablet itself, the smooth metallic back feels nice on the hands, although we're not overly keen on the white border around the front bezel.
There's obviously a lot more being packed in the Iconia W3 and the tablet is a fair bit heavier than both the iPad Mini and Nexus 7. It's still usable in one hand, but you'll soon start to notice that extra bulk which feels a little heavier than it perhaps needs to be.

Specs and performance

The W3's Intel Atom Clover Trail 72760 chip has a dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM and a clock speed of 1.8GHz, meaning the tablet is zippy enough to handle Windows 8 operations.
Only a couple of times did we find things slowing down when switching between Office programs, but we can see that the tablet might buckle a tiny bit more had we been able to spend more time on running tasks.
32GB or 64GB storage variants of the Iconia W3 will be available, both of which offer an extra 32GB via microSD. Meanwhile, a micro HDMI output can be found on the bottom of the tablet along with a pair of stereo speakers.

The desktop experience - in one hand

Display

The touchscreen display isn't as vivid as you might expect - it only packs a 1,200 x 800 resolution. When jumping around the screen, we noticed that the colours often looked a bit on the dull side.
Front and rear cameras are, as expected, present, though at 2MP each they feel like a missed opportunity on a device that's veering into the acceptable-camera-use territory.

Say cheese

We found that using the small touchscreen on Office applications, especially Excel, a tad on the fiddly side, but were still impressed by having full-fat Windows in the palm of our hands.
And that's another thing - Iconia W3 buyers will also get a copy of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 for free as a nice added extra.

Pocket power

However - and it is a big however - there are still two questions being begged here. First, do people want the desktop experience in a tablet? Or is throwing the whole thing in missing the point entiely?
And second, if Microsoft is in fact about to push out a 7-inch Windows 8 tablet of its own, will Acer's matter?
We won't really know the answer to the first question until people start picking up (or not picking up) the slate, but having played with the W3, it feels like 8 inches is about a low as you'd want to go when using full Windows. Therefore, Microsoft's offering might actually be one inch cut too many.
So what about the price? The 32GB and 64GB will be tagged €329 (about £280, $427, AUS $445) and €379 (about £325, $492, AUS $512) respectively. For that price, we have to say that we expected a little bit more, but we'll hold out on making a judgement call until our full review.

Early Verdict

The Iconia W3 was always going to impress on being a record-breaker alone, and having played with it, we can see a lot of great benefits in having Windows 8 in the palm.
But while this could give the OS the big kick it's been waiting for, it currently feels like the price and ambition should have resulted in something more, though we'd have to spend a lot more time with the tablet to see if it could actually replace both desktop and tablet OS at the same time.
Still, at least there isn't long to wait - the Iconia W3 will be launching this month, with pre-orders live now.

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Acer Iconia Tab A500

In the contest to replace your laptop – and maybe even your TV – Android 3.0 tablets such as the Motorola Xoom are ganging up on the Apple iPad 2by sheer quantity. We absolutely thrilled over the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, for example. Now it's time for the Acer Iconia Tab A500's day in the sun.

In many ways, this is all about the operating system, so we'll admit that the differences between the three main Android 3.0 tabs are marginal at best. You have to choose your OS poison wisely – the iPad 2 is better for music, movies and games, and it has better quality apps and more of them.

Meanwhile, the BlackBerry PlayBook is more secure than the competition, has real multi-tasking and even a more fluid interface for controlling your apps (er, all four of them).

Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablets are arguably more open than either theiPad 2 or the PlayBook. The app approval process is easier, and coding is less restrictive, using Google SDK.

So what does that means for the Acer Iconia Tab A500? Primarily, the decision comes down to the design and handling of the device. The Iconia Tab A500 uses the same Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor as the Motorola Xoom, they both weigh exactly 730g and both have a 10.1-inch touchscreen. The list goes on: both devices have 32GB of internal memory, 1GB of RAM and support microSD cards up to 64GB.

Yet, the main difference is that the Acer Iconia Tab A500 feels bulkier. That can be a good thing for those who tend to abuse their gadgets mercilessly, since the Iconia Tab A500 has an aluminium back and a sturdier, stockier footprint. In a side-by-side comparison, the Motorola Xoom looks more like an iPad 2 and the Iconia Tab A500 fits in better with a recent crop of Windows 7 tablets, including the rather disappointing Acer Iconia Tab W500.

The Iconia Tab A500 not only feels bulkier, it is bulkier. The device measures 260 x 177 x 13.3mm, which is significantly wider than the MotorolaXoom, considering both devices have the same size screen.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 also has a dedicated HDMI-out port for playing 1080p video on your HD TV, like the Motorola Xoom. What's really missing is a selection of unusually impressive extra features – the Asus Eee Pad Transformer morphs into a real notebook; the HTC Flyer has a helpful add-on interface component.

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 also has a front-facing 2MP camera and a rear facing 5MP cam. In the box, Acer includes a charger and USB cable, but no earbuds, case or stand.

The Iconia Tab A500 does provide one UI add-on for categorising apps. For example, games are separated into their own screen. It has a limited appeal, but at least there's something new on offer. One other slight differentiator: the Iconia Tab A500 includes a couple of extra apps and games beyond the norm.

At £450 for Wi-Fi only or £530 for Wi-Fi and 3G, the Acer Iconia is a hair cheaper than the Motorola Xoom but more than the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. There will, however, be a 16GB version emerging in mid-june for £380 which could be a more attractive option.

So does the Acer Iconia Tab A500 really fall in the middle? Does it rank near the top of the tabs or closer to the bottom?

The Acer Iconia Tab A500 has a less appealing, more traditional design than the Motorola Xoom, which is all-black with a power button on the back. With the Iconia Tab A500, the buttons are a bit harder to find. It's easy to forget (or get all turned around in orientation) and fumble for the power key, which is on the left. The headphone jack and HDMI port are also on the left. There's a docking port underneath as well.

On the right, there's a USB port (presumably a vestige of the W500 model) that only worked with a standard keyboard, not a mouse. You can also attach a USB keydrive into the port, but the Iconia Tab A500 only lets you access files using a file manager, not directly.

There's also a standard microUSB port and the charge port. On top, there are two volume control buttons and a screen lock switch. You'll also find a covered port for the microSD slot, which Acer says will be used for adding an LTE card at some point.

The 1280 x 800 TFT display on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 measures 10.1 inches, like the Motorola Xoom, and is bright and clear. The screen isn't a weak point but isn't a differentiator either. In a side-by-side comparison to the Apple iPad 2, with the brightness for both devices turned all the way up, the iPad 2 looked brighter and easier to view from a side angle. Compared to the Xoom, the Iconia Tab A500's screen looked remarkably similar.

Some of the hardware differentiators on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 might not be obvious at first. Like the Motorola Xoom and the Apple iPad 2, the speakers for playing movie audio and music are just average – about what you might expect on an entry-level netbook.

There's very little bass response but average clarity. Yet, Acer added a slight tweak: the Iconia Tab A500 uses Dolby Mobile technology that did seem to make the movie Fair Game sound a bit more life-like – you actually hear some shuffling feet or background audio more distinctly.

Some graphically-rich sites such as GamesRadar.com and CNN.com pulled up a hair faster on the Iconia Tab A500 than the Motorola Xoom, even over the exact same Wi-Fi connection, although oddly, the Google Earth app ran a hair faster on the Xoom.

Acer includes a content sharing system called Clear.fi that is essentially a low-cost way to build a home entertainment streaming network. That's a good thing, since the Iconia Tab A500 doesn't offer any way to purchase or rent videos from the device (Motorola just recently added this capability to the Xoom).

Clear.fi works like Windows Connect in that you can set up a media server and stream music, videos and photos to the device. In an age of Hulu, YouTube, and even apps such as HBO Go in the US, the idea of a media server seems a bit redundant – we'd prefer at least an option for streaming mainstream videos from the web directly to the device.

Full Spesification's For Acer Iconia Tab A500

GENERAL	2G Network	N/A
	SIM	No
	Announced	2011, February. Released 2011, April
	Status	Discontinued

BODY	Dimensions	260 x 177 x 13.3 mm (10.24 x 6.97 x 0.52 in)
	Weight	730 g (1.61 lb)

DISPLAY	Type	LCD capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors
	Size	800 x 1280 pixels, 10.1 inches (~149 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
		- Acer UI

SOUND	Alert types	N/A
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 32 GB
	Internal	16/32 GB storage, 1 GB DDR2 RAM

DATA	GPRS	No
	EDGE	No
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0, USB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Video	Yes
	Secondary	Yes, 2 MP

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v3.0, v3.2, planned upgrade to v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
	Chipset	Nvidia Tegra 2 T20
	CPU	Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9
	GPU	ULP GeForce
	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, proximity
	Messaging	Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML, Adobe Flash
	Radio	No
	GPS	Yes
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black
		- SNS integration - HDMI port - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa - MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player - XviD/MP4/H.264/H.263 player - Organizer - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Po 3260 mAh battery
	Stand-by	Up to 200 h
	Talk time	Up to 6 h

MISC	Price group

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Acer Iconia Tab A100

Life is all about choices and trade-offs. With the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the main compromise is in size. This 417g tablet, the first to run the Android 3.2 operating system, is too big to be a smartphone and too small – at a 7-inch screen size – to watch movies on. It fills a small niche for those who want an ebook reader that also runs apps.

For some, the form factor might be just about right. While the HTC Flyer is now showing signs of age, both tablets fit into the same mould: both offer a compact 7-inch screen, the Tegra 2 processor running at 1GHz and 1GB RAM. The Acer Iconia Tab A100 is actually 3g lighter, but you won't notice.

However, there are a few differences between the two pocket-sized tabs. We say pocket-sized with a smirk – you really need pretty large pockets for that to work.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 runs Android 3.2 out of the box, whereas mostHTC Flyers have to be updated to 3.2.

This version of the operating system, named Honeycomb, supports screen scaling to run apps made for smartphones. However, on the 7-inch screen the resizing for smartphone apps isn't that noticeable.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 also provides a few interesting apps. One is called Planner and it presents a handy all-in-one view of recent news, your email, calendar and notes.

Like the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the A100 uses an app categorisation system for grouping apps into bins for social networking, ebooks, games and so on. Sure, it's nothing more than an extra home screen system, and doesn't look that great, but at least we're not talking about plain vanilla Android here.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 also provides a 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing chat camera. The HTC Flyer's chat camera is only 1.3MP.

Most critically, the HTC Flyer uses a single-core CPU while the Acer Iconia Tab A100 stays current with recent 10-inch tabs by offering the Tegra 2 dual-core chip.

In truth, most of the other differences compared to the HTC Flyer are cosmetic, or related to usability and the screen technology used on the two tablets. However, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 gets the nod over the HTC Flyer if only for including a new version of Android.

And there's a smart fold-open case for the Acer Iconia Tab A100 where you can set it almost vertical on a desk.

We should mention the BlackBerry PlayBook, even though many tablet users have forgotten it exists. There are still no strong apps on it to speak about, but the PlayBook also has a 7-inch screen. We can't recommend it unless you really need the business security features or already use a BlackBerry smartphone. Both the HTC Flyer and the Acer Iconia Tab A100 are better buys because of the boatload of Android apps available.

Oh, and there's still the first-gen 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, which shares some similarity in size but uses the older Android 2.2 Froyo operating system. It enables you to rent movies, but otherwise its apps are all designed for smartphones.

The Acer Iconia Tab A100 8GB model we tested costs only $330 in the US, and £299.99 in the UK. The HTC Flyer is priced at £480. That makes the A100 the better buy. But the reality is that 10-inch tabs aren't that much more expensive, not that much heavier – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is only 148g heavier than the A100 – and better suited to watching movies and playing games.

In some ways, we're not sure where the Acer Iconia Tab A100 fits. The larger size of a 10-inch tab such as the Apple iPad 2 is a bit unwieldy for books, so in many ways the 7-inch screen of the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is more suited to book pages.

Otherwise, the Acer Iconia Tab A100 comes with all of the expected specs for a modern tablet: the Android 3.2 operating system, a 7-inch screen with 1024 x 600resolution, Wi-Fi, GPS, tilt sensors, a micro USB port for connecting to your computer, a micro HDMI port for video and audio-out to an HD TV, a 3.5mm headphone jack and Bluetooth 2.1.

The tablet is only 12.7mm thick and looks like an oversized smartphone.

The speakers are below the Home button in a portrait orientation. There are volume control knobs on the right, and a screen lock switch. There are no buttons on the left-hand side. At the top, it's easy to find the power button and the headphone jack.

Also below the Home button, you'll find the HDMI and USB ports, and a port for connecting the Acer Iconia Tab A100 to an optional dock. This dock includes audio connections for external speakers and one for running an HDMI-out cable to an HD TV.

One word of caution: even though the Acer Iconia Tab A100 is small and nimble, it's not long-lasting. The tablet is rated for only five hours of battery – the small size clearly means a small battery. Streaming videos will chew up the battery in about four hours, and other rich media might make the Acer Iconia Tab A100 die after four and a half hours.

The Tegra processor is faster than those on some tablets like the Flyer

Full spesification's For Acer Iconia Tab A100

GENERAL	2G Network	N/A
	SIM	No
	Announced	2011, February
	Status	Available. Released 2011, April

BODY	Dimensions	195 x 117 x 13.1 mm (7.68 x 4.61 x 0.52 in)
	Weight	450 g (0.99 lb)

DISPLAY	Type	LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	600 x 1024 pixels, 7.0 inches (~170 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes
		- Acer UI

SOUND	Alert types	N/A
	Loudspeaker	Yes, with stereo speakers
	3.5mm jack	Yes
		- Dolby mobile sound enhancement

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 32 GB
	Internal	8/16 GB storage, 1 GB RAM

DATA	GPRS	No
	EDGE	No
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.1 with A2DP, EDR
	USB	Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA	Primary	5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Geo-tagging, image stabilization
	Video	Yes, 720p@30fps
	Secondary	Yes, 2 MP

FEATURES	OS	Android OS, v3.0, v3.2, planned upgrade to v4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
	Chipset	Nvidia Tegra 2 T20
	CPU	Dual-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9
	GPU	ULP GeForce
	Sensors	Accelerometer, gyro, compass
	Messaging	Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	HTML, Adobe Flash
	Radio	No
	GPS	Yes
	Java	Yes, via Java MIDP emulator
	Colors	Black/Red, Black/Blue
		- SNS integration - HDMI port - Google Search, Maps, Gmail - YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa - MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player - XviD/MP4/H.264/H.263 player - Organizer - Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) - Predictive text input

BATTERY		Non-removable Li-Po 1530 mAh battery
	Stand-by
	Talk time

MISC	Price group

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