Acer Iconia W700 Review
These days, tablet
manufacturers usually consider it very important to offer consumers the
sleekest and lightest devices when it comes to tablets. After all, a
slate should be synonymous with portability and flexibility. Well, not
always: meet the Acer Iconia W700, which can be said to be a bit of a
beast. If you are one of those people who want a tablet
that can be jiggled around in one hand, then this is definitely not for
you. With this piece, you will most likely have to use both hands to
handle it properly. Nevertheless, there’s a good excuse for its bulkier
design, it packs an Intel Core i5-3317U Ivy Bridge processor, which
makes it more powerful than your average tablet.
Acer Iconia W700 Review
Also
on the positive side of things, this is a sturdy, resilient device with
a nice aluminum unibody, so it won't get damaged easily.
Design
As
stated above, the Acer Iconia W700 is quite chunky and its weight makes
it feel more like a regular notebook. It’s 295 mm / 11 inches in
length, 191 mm / 7 inches in height , 11.1 mm / 0.43 inches thick and
weighs a hand-breaking 942 g / 2.07 pounds.
So, it’s definitely
not a casual couch companion. The laptop comparison is not so
far-fetched considering that the slate comes with a detachable Bluetooth
keyboard cover.
The Iconia W700 is pretty heavy by itself, but
the keyboard cover wraps around it pretty neatly, so you’ll be able to
carry it around like a book, a heavier book of sorts. The cover allows
you to prop the tablet up on your desk and, despite my initial doubts,
it does a good job.
The only problem I stumbled upon at first was
that it was actually complicated to get the slate into the cover wrap. I
couldn’t slide it gently, but as I repeated the procedure, the plastic
gave in and I eventually managed to glide it in smoothly.
The wrapping also covers the power and sound buttons, and at times you really have to forcefully press them to get them to work.
On
the left side, the device features a micro HDMI port, a USB 3.0, A/C
charging port and the promise of Dolby Home Theatre audio experience,
which basically means that users are going to enjoy surround sound.
The
right side is home to the audio output jack. The speakers are located
on the bottom, so it’s impossible to miss them as they are outlined in
zingy red, and it turns out they do a very swell job.
At the top
of the screen, there’s the cooling fan that will protect the Iconia W700
against getting overheated. If you're going to be browsing around the
web or reading an eBook, the fan is going to keep pretty quiet, but that
will change if you start toying with a more advanced application like
Photoshop.
Display
In
terms of display, we can acknowledge that Acer has done an awesome job
here, packing a 1080p IPS screen coated with a nice layer of Gorilla
Glass.
It comes with a reasonably slim black bezel and boasts an
11-inch display with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, which basically
means we’re dealing with a full HD screen here. If you're not happy with
the default screen brightness, it can be easily adjusted from the
Settings charm.
Even
tiny text on some web pages we’ve browsed was perfectly visible and
prolonged exposure to the screen didn't pose any fatigue problems. Video
content was also beautifully displayed with full, sharp colors adding
to the experience.
Power and Performance
The Acer Iconia
W700 packs an Intel Core i5-3337U processor under the hood, coupled with
4GB of RAM and integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics. The chip is basically
the same that can be found in most Ultrabooks nowadays, so you won’t be
wrong if you expect everything to run smoothly.
The W700 ships
with Windows 8 out of the box and swiping through the interface was
quite breezy and smooth. However, some hours later, I started to notice
some lagging issues when trying to access certain apps. Heavy
multi-tabbed Web browsing posed no problem and moving through tabs was
surprisingly easy, even with those that had HD videos running.
Acer claims booting time can be achieved in a meager 6.7 seconds, which is darn fast.
With 128GB SSD and 4GB of RAM, the slate offers plenty of room for everything you might want to add to it.
Keep
in mind that the device offers the full Windows 8 experience, rather
than the limited Windows RT one. This is definitely an improvement from
other hybrids like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11, Microsoft's own Surface
RT or Asus VivoTab.
With a powerful processor like that, the Acer
Iconia W700 can pretty much handle everything you throw at it in terms
of multimedia playback.
This includes videos streaming with full
and rich audio. Thus, you won't have any problem viewing content from
services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon's Prime Instant Video.
Camera
The slate features a pretty capable front 1MP camera/webcam with built-in microphone, that takes reasonably bright 720p videos.
The
5-megapixel camera on the back yields rather mediocre pictures, so we
were not overall impressed with its performance, as it has a tendency to
flatten shots with poor light management.
Video shooting in broad daylight proved to provide smooth frames with bright colors, though.
Software
The
machine is running Windows 8, which obviously means you can get Windows
desktop applications, Windows 7 applications and everything you find
interesting in the Windows store.
Browsing through the Metro
interface is extremely easy and intuitive; unfortunately, doing stuff
while in the traditional desktop environment is not as much fun since
most text and icons are too small. Clicking on icons proves to be super
fiddly and Acer should have probably set the default scaling to 125 or
even 150%.
The
Iconia W700 comes with a lot of pre-installed applications (which some
people might consider bloatware) from Acer's extensive library of
offerings, such as the Acer Power Button, Acer Crystal Eye Camera or
Acer Power Management.
A convenient tool called Acer Ring has been
added, which basically allows users to shuffle through everything found
on their device like photos, videos, documents and apps.
But
that's not all you get; you'll also find a lot of other stuff on board,
some of it useful, some of it not so much. Yet, we have newsXpresso,
TuneIn, Kindle, Skitch Touch, HP Printer Control, Fresh Paint, Skype.
eBay, Amazon and a bunch of games like Shark Dash.
And
of course you further get Microsoft's own apps like Games, Music,
Video, Sports, Reader, Maps, Messaging, Bing Search, WeatherBug – some
of which redirect users to their specific webstores.
There are two
versions of Internet Explorer, one accessible through the Metro
interface, and one available in desktop. We preferred using the first
version, because in live tile mode IE runs in full screen, so everything
has been scaled to make things look bigger and the text more readable.
The whole range of Microsoft Office 2013 has also been bundled with the tablet.
Connectivity
In
terms of connectivity, the Acer Iconia W700 bundles Atheros Wi-Fi
802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. There's no LAN, NFC or GPS or 3G. A
second USB port and a microSD/SD card might have been a nice addition.
Battery
The
Iconia W700 features a 4,850mAh battery, which Acer claims will last
for up to eight hours of intense use. And that's about right. We used
the Iconia W700 for playing games, using apps, browsing online and
streaming video without running out of battery.
Unlike most
slates, however, the Iconia W700 doesn't allow charging to be made via
USB, which might put a damper on things if you were hoping to get more
mobility out of the slob. The charging kit is also super bulky, and I
don’t know how much fun it will be to carry that around.
The good
Acer
is offering some sort of hybrid here; the Iconia W700 is a machine that
can be used as a standalone tablet, but when coupled with the keyboard,
it can turn into a powerful laptop. It offers a long battery life and
an amazing screen. Actually, we think that the screen is the biggest
selling point along with the powerful hardware packed under the hood,
thanks to which you can probably do anything.
The bad
As
we mentioned before, the Iconia W700 is very bulky and one can easily
get tired while holding it for playing a game. The best way to work with
the W700 is keeping it propped up in its keyboard cover. Then, there's
the price, which is pretty impressive to say the least. Even if Acer is
offering some extra accessories with it, you might find something
sleeker and nicer looking in today's market for the same amount of cash.
Overall Impressions
It
appears that the Acer Iconia W700 was built more with an ultrabook /
laptop framework in mind, meant to be used for both work and play,
rather that of a real tablet. Mobility feats, which make people love
slates so much, simply lack here. Surely, you can use it at the office
or at home, but forget about taking it with you, if you're planning a
hiking trip.
Nevertheless, if you're looking for a laptop
replacement, the Acer Iconia W700 might be the right answer. However,
with a price starting at $1,249 / €912, you'd probably be able to
stumble upon some interesting cheaper alternatives.
It was inevitable: After years of highs and then a plateau, digital music sales saw their first decrease in 2013. Last year, digital song purchases dropped almost six percent according to a Billboard report,
while digital album sales dropped 0.1 percent. Compact discs continued
their downward spiral as well, and took a 14.5 percent loss. On the flip
side, pure analog music (read: vinyl)
showed an increase of 31.9 percent -- representing a full two percent
of music sales. Until Nielsen's SoundScan report for streaming hits,
however, we won't know how much of an impact the likes of Spotify or
Rdio are having on purchases. We have a hunch it'll be rather telling.
