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Acer Iconia W700

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What's Hot: Great value for the money, very good full HD display, fast Core i5 and lots of bundled accessories including a dock.

What's Not: No digital pen option.

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Reviewed April 16, 2013 by , Editor in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)

You knew the MS Surface Pro wasn't the only Windows 8 tablet with a Core i5 in town, right? The Acer Iconia W700 is an 11.6" Windows 8 64 bit tablet with an 11.6" full HD IPS display and the same Intel Core i5 1.7GHz CPU, 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM and a 128 gig SSD as Surface Pro. It lists for $999, and for that price you get a dock that adds 3 USB ports, a very usable Bluetooth keyboard and a homely but functional case. And there's an HDMI to VGA adapter in the box too.

Acer Iconia W700

The Acer Iconia W700 has a USB 3.0 port, micro HDMI and a 3.5mm audio jack plus good stereo speakers with Dolby Home Theater 4.0 audio. It weighs 2. 1 pounds and is 0.47" thick. Though Windows 8 touch screen convertibles and tablets with Intel Core CPUs haven't had the best battery life, the Acer manages to impress us with 6.5 to 7 hours of battery life with brightness at 50% and WiFi on. Since the IPS 1920 x 1080 display has 350 nits brightness, 50% is a perfectly reasonable and bright setting for indoor use. If you're gaming, expect shorter runtimes, but if you mainly use it for productivity (MS Office, web, social networking, email, music playback and some streaming video) it will currently outlast other Core i5 Windows tablets on the market.

Acer Iconia W700

Design and Ergonomics

Your call: is this a clean, minimalist design or an uninspired slab of aluminum. To my eye, the casing looks high quality enough, but it also resembles the design lab basic casing before a product goes through the style phase. The W700's casing is a single piece of aluminum and it feels and looks like a well made piece of hardware. There's a single USB 3.0 port, micro HDMI, 3.5mm audio and surprisingly good stereo speakers. The tablet has volume controls, a display rotation lock slider, power button and a physical (moving) home button below the display. The back is brushed aluminum that's very similar to the 11.6" Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook, and it has no flex. The display bezel is relatively narrow and the included brown faux leather case acts as a stand. Though the bundled dock is truly bizarre and a little ugly, we love the added functionality.

Acer Iconia W700

Performance and Horsepower

We received the Core 1.7GHz i5-3317U (it's now available with the 1.8GHz Intel Core i5-3337U) with Intel HD 4000 graphics, and it's available with your choice of a 64 or 128 gig SSD drive. There's a Core i3 model available for a little less, but we don't recommend it since the performance is significantly less than the Core i5 and the savings isn't that great. There is no Core i7 model. The tablet runs relatively quiet and cool compared to Ultrabooks and laptops. You'll hear an ever so quiet whisper of air most of the time and the fan only kicks up when stressing the system with tasks like demanding gaming and HD video export. The CPU does tend to throttle conservatively to keep temperatures down, but most users won't notice this unless they're processing HD video. Still, it's not completely silent like an iPad, nor is it both silent and chilly like Intel Atom fanless Windows 8 tablets such as the HP Envy x2. That said, the W700 doesn't get toastier than the iPad 3 or Retina iPad and is generally cooler than the Microsoft Surface Pro.

Acer Iconia W700

Benchmarks

PCMark 7: 4357 (Intel Core i5-3317U)

Windows Experience Index (scale of 1.0 - 9.9):

Processor: 6.9
RAM: 5.9
Desktop Graphics: 5.4
Gaming Graphics: 6.3
Primary Hard Disk: 8.1

Benchmark Comparison Table, Windows 8 ULV Notebooks and Tablets:

  Acer Iconia W700 MS Surface Pro Samsung ATIV 700T Dell XPS 12 (Core i5) Asus Taichi 21 (Core i7) Sony Vaio Duo 11 (Core i5) Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 (Core i5) HP Envy x2 (Intel Atom)
PCMark 07 4357 4657 4034 4678 4952 4772 4427 1523

 

Full Windows 8 64: it Runs Everything Made for a PC

This is a full Windows 8 machine with Ultrabook internals, so you can run Adobe Photoshop, iTunes, Windows Media Player, software development tools and any other Windows 7 .exe app you desire. It's very quick and responsive, unlike Intel Atom tablets that are fine in the Windows 8 Live Tile environment but can be sluggish in desktop mode. It's as smart and spritely as any Ultrabook on the market.

 

Deals and Shopping:

 

Acer Iconia W700 Video Review

Display

What doesn't it have? There's no active digitizer and digital pen like MS Surface Pro and the Samsung ATIV 700T, so it's not a good choice for artists, note takers or math and science types who want to hand write formulas with a pen. If you prefer a somewhat larger display and don't need the digital pen, the Acer Iconia W700 is certainly a viable alternative to the Surface Pro.

The glossy full HD display is extremely sharp and quite bright at 350 nits (especially if you disable Windows 8's draconian auto-brightness under General settings). Acer didn't cut corners here, and we really love the W700's display. You'll probably need to bump up the display dpi to 125% or 150% to see the tiny text in desktop mode, though given the IPS display's sharpness if your eyes are good, you might manage fine at 100%.

Wireless

The Acer Iconia W700 has dual band Atheros WiFi (sorry, no WiDi), Bluetooth 4.0, a front video chat camera and a mediocre 5 megapixel rear camera. There's no NFC or GPS, though you can use WiFi triangulation for location in populous areas.

Conclusion

As ever, Acer has managed a bargain with better specs and more goodies in the box than their competitors. What's new are the classy unibody aluminum casing and overall high end specs. This tablet has an excellent full HD display, good performance and the dock is included. The only thing missing is a digital pen for note takers and artists, but alas there's no active digitizer here.

Price: $999 for the Intel Core i5 with 128 gig SSD and 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM

Website: www.acer.com

Related:

Microsoft Surface Pro review

Acer Aspire S7 review

HP Envy x2 review

Acer Iconia W510 review

 

Acer Iconia W700

 

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Specs:

Display: 11.6", 1920 x 1080 IPS touch screen. Intel HD 4000 integrated graphics. Micro HDMI port and VGA port via included adpater.

Battery: 3 cell, 4850 Lithium Ion rechargeable, sealed inside. Compact 65 watt charger included.

Performance: Available with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 third generation Ivy Bridge CPUs. 4 gigs DDR3 RAM soldered on board and 64 or 128 gig SSD drive.

Size: 11.6 x 7.5 x .5 inches. Weight: 2.1 pounds.

Camera: 1.3MP front camera and 5MP rear camera.

Audio: Built-in stereo speakers with Dolby audio, mic and 3.5mm standard stereo headphone jack.

Networking: Integrated dual band Atheros WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 + HS.

Software: Windows 8 64 bit Home Premium.

Expansion and Ports: 1 USB 3.0 port, micro HDMI, 3.5mm combo audio. VGA via included adapter. Dock adds 3 USB ports.

 

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