Acer w510 tablet review, is this the tablet you have been waiting for?

[the_tyrant]

The tablet market is pretty much dominated by the iPad with a few strong runner ups trying to challenge its dominance. In the under 400$ market, we see the iPad mini fighting the Nexus 7 (and to a lesser extent the Nexus 10). In the 500$ and above market, the Apple iPad easily dominates the market, while the Microsoft Surface is trying to break into the second place position. Acer is trying to take a slice of the high end market with its w series tablets. Today I will be taking a look at the smaller of the two, the Acer w510.
The Acer w510 is a full Windows 8 convertible tablet, built on the Intel clover trail platform. This means, that unlike the Apple iPad or even the Microsoft Surface, the Acer w510 can run full windows programs. Almost everything written for the Windows Desktop can run on the Acer w510. Acer themselves seems to agree that the w510 is a laptop replacement, with an optional keyboard dock that can be used to turn the w510 into a laptop. Does the w510 pull its weight as a tablet? Well how about as a laptop? Let’s start by looking at the hardware.

500$ might only buy you an entry level device in the laptop market, but in the tablet market, 500$ is enough to buy you both the Apple iPad and the Microsoft Surface, two high end, well-built devices. In front of the iPad and Surface, the Acer w510 feels cheap. It’s not that the Acer w510 is poorly built, just that in front of the iPad’s unibody aluminum construction, and the Surface’s Vapour-MG casing, it feels cheap. The body of the Acer w510 is constructed with flimsy feeling plastic. Compared to tablets at a lower price point like the Google Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7, the Acer w510 feels decent enough, but for a 500$ device, I would really like to see something better.



Now the main thing that makes the Acer w510 stand out is its Atom CPU. It is an Intel x86 chip, and that allows it to be compatible with the millions upon millions of windows programs. When people think of the “Atom”, the general idea is that it is cheap crap. That might have been true for the netbooks of old, but for a tablet chip the CPU itself performs admirably, and benchmarks from a variety of sources shows that the CPU performs comparably or better than the A6 in the iPad 4th gen or the Tegra 3 in the Surface RT. From a subjective perspective, the w510 does not struggle with “tablet grade” tasks. Web browsing, light office work, Netflix and other common tablet tasks do not make the Atom struggle.

However, on the GPU side, the Atom struggles to keep up. The tegra 3 easily outperforms the Atom’s GPU. The Atom occasionally struggles in windows 8 games, playing Metro style windows 8 games is not a really pleasant experience on the Acer w510. The Microsoft surface is effectively the baseline for windows developers, when you have a tablet like the Acer w510 that underperforms the baseline, many games simply are too demanding for this tablet to run well. Still, it is a competent performer for most non – gaming tasks, 1080p videos play fine; the 3d accelerated UI also does not lag at all, which, considering the performance of many android devices and windows netbooks, is in itself an achievement. Just keep your gaming expectations to a minimum, the best this device can do is to play 10 year old games like counter-strike.

As for the screen, all I can say is that the w510 has a pretty bad screen for its price group. The iPad has better PPI, the Surface has better contrast. This is not to say that the w510 has a bad screen, but its screen simply cannot hope to compete against its rivals in the same price group. As for the speakers and cameras, they are pretty much decidedly “tablet quality”, which is to say that they are pretty bad, use only in a pinch.

The keyboard dock works competently. I mean, the keys are small, and the feedback is mediocre. You do not get full n-key roll over (something that the Microsoft surface’s touch cover and type cover has). The touchpad itself is also pretty average; it’s just an average cheap netbook clickpad. However, the big thing about the dock is that it has a battery in there. With the dock attached, you can easily get 15 hours + usage from the w510. If you are getting the w510, get the keyboard dock with it, it is worth getting just for the battery alone.

From a software perspective, Acer loaded some preloaded junk. (pro tip: buy your computers from the Microsoft store, those computers come clean) I won’t go in depth about windows 8; it is far above the scope of this review. All I can say really say about this device is, software side, there is really nothing to say. However, there are some unstable drivers, after some fixes, most of the stuff is fixed, it is really just the camera is slightly unstable. There are some issues here and there, but nothing too major.

Finally, should you get the Acer w510 or not? In my opinion at least, it is a really strong contender in the mid to high end tablet segment. The Acer w510 could easily replace any tablet like the iPad or Surface, as a laptop replacement it is slightly lacking, feels more like a netbook than a good laptop. At current prices (750$ for the 64gb version, with dock, 599$ without dock), it is a very good choice. After all, it is priced very competitively against the Microsoft surface and the Apple iPad. Sure, the build quality is lacking, and the screen could be improved on. However, it is a great light device that runs an x86 chip, and has great battery life. At 599$, I say, take a good long look at it if you are looking for a tablet. But, black Friday this year, the price dropped at 399$, if you can find it on sale for 399$, than it is THE BEST DEAL out there, bar none.

[CoreyNunez]

Originally Posted by the_tyrant

The tablet market is pretty much dominated by the iPad with a few strong runner ups trying to challenge its dominance. In the under 400$ market, we see the iPad mini fighting the Nexus 7 (and to a lesser extent the Nexus 10). In the 500$ and above market, the Apple iPad easily dominates the market, while the Microsoft Surface is trying to break into the second place position. Acer is trying to take a slice of the high end market with its w series tablets. Today I will be taking a look at the smaller of the two, the Acer w510.
The Acer w510 is a full Windows 8 convertible tablet, built on the Intel clover trail platform. This means, that unlike the Apple iPad or even the Microsoft Surface, the Acer w510 can run full windows programs. Almost everything written for the Windows Desktop can run on the Acer w510. Acer themselves seems to agree that the w510 is a laptop replacement, with an optional keyboard dock that can be used to turn the w510 into a laptop. Does the w510 pull its weight as a tablet? Well how about as a laptop? Let’s start by looking at the hardware.

500$ might only buy you an entry level device in the laptop market, but in the tablet market, 500$ is enough to buy you both the Apple iPad and the Microsoft Surface, two high end, well-built devices. In front of the iPad and Surface, the Acer w510 feels cheap. It’s not that the Acer w510 is poorly built, just that in front of the iPad’s unibody aluminum construction, and the Surface’s Vapour-MG casing, it feels cheap. The body of the Acer w510 is constructed with flimsy feeling plastic. Compared to tablets at a lower price point like the Google Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7, the Acer w510 feels decent enough, but for a 500$ device, I would really like to see something better.



Now the main thing that makes the Acer w510 stand out is its Atom CPU. It is an Intel x86 chip, and that allows it to be compatible with the millions upon millions of windows programs. When people think of the “Atom”, the general idea is that it is cheap crap. That might have been true for the netbooks of old, but for a tablet chip the CPU itself performs admirably, and benchmarks from a variety of sources shows that the CPU performs comparably or better than the A6 in the iPad 4th gen or the Tegra 3 in the Surface RT. From a subjective perspective, the w510 does not struggle with “tablet grade” tasks. Web browsing, light office work, Netflix and other common tablet tasks do not make the Atom struggle.

However, on the GPU side, the Atom struggles to keep up. The tegra 3 easily outperforms the Atom’s GPU. The Atom occasionally struggles in windows 8 games, playing Metro style windows 8 games is not a really pleasant experience on the Acer w510. The Microsoft surface is effectively the baseline for windows developers, when you have a tablet like the Acer w510 that underperforms the baseline, many games simply are too demanding for this tablet to run well. Still, it is a competent performer for most non – gaming tasks, 1080p videos play fine; the 3d accelerated UI also does not lag at all, which, considering the performance of many android devices and windows netbooks, is in itself an achievement. Just keep your gaming expectations to a minimum, the best this device can do is to play 10 year old games like counter-strike.

As for the screen, all I can say is that the w510 has a pretty bad screen for its price group. The iPad has better PPI, the Surface has better contrast. This is not to say that the w510 has a bad screen, but its screen simply cannot hope to compete against its rivals in the same price group. As for the speakers and cameras, they are pretty much decidedly “tablet quality”, which is to say that they are pretty bad, use only in a pinch.

The keyboard dock works competently. I mean, the keys are small, and the feedback is mediocre. You do not get full n-key roll over (something that the Microsoft surface’s touch cover and type cover has). The touchpad itself is also pretty average; it’s just an average cheap netbook clickpad. However, the big thing about the dock is that it has a battery in there. With the dock attached, you can easily get 15 hours + usage from the w510. If you are getting the w510, get the keyboard dock with it, it is worth getting just for the battery alone.

From a software perspective, Acer loaded some preloaded junk. (pro tip: buy your computers from the Microsoft store, those computers come clean) I won’t go in depth about windows 8; it is far above the scope of this review. All I can say really say about this device is, software side, there is really nothing to say. However, there are some unstable drivers, after some fixes, most of the stuff is fixed, it is really just the camera is slightly unstable. There are some issues here and there, but nothing too major.

Finally, should you get the Acer w510 or not? In my opinion at least, it is a really strong contender in the mid to high end tablet segment. The Acer w510 could easily replace any tablet like the iPad or Surface, as a laptop replacement it is slightly lacking, feels more like a netbook than a good laptop. At current prices (750$ for the 64gb version, with dock, 599$ without dock), it is a very good choice. After all, it is priced very competitively against the Microsoft surface and the Apple iPad. Sure, the build quality is lacking, and the screen could be improved on. However, it is a great light device that runs an x86 chip, and has great battery life. At 599$, I say, take a good long look at it if you are looking for a tablet. But, black Friday this year, the price dropped at 399$, if you can find it on sale for 399$, than it is THE BEST DEAL out there, bar none.

Tablet looks awesome. It surely gives challenge to most advanced tablets available in the market. I am using galaxy tab and it does perform very well. There are plenty of tablet options so very healthy state for customers