Acer has recently gone big into the tablet arena, offering both Windows 7 and Android models. On the street for around A$800, the Acer Iconia Tab W500P is its newest Windows 7 version, powered by a 1GHz AMD dual-core C-50 CPU with Radeon HD 6250 graphics driving a 10in, 1,280 x 800 LCD panel. The novel feature here is the unit’s removable keyboard dock, which basically turns it into a notebook.
However, there’s no battery in the base; in fact, there’s nothing more than the keyboard, two USB ports and an Ethernet port. It also doesn’t fold up — you have to remove it, then clip it into position on one side while magnetic posts hold it in on the other — it doesn’t feel too secure. The tablet itself houses an HDMI output, SD card reader and two USB ports (one used as the dock connector).
The 32-bit version of Windows 7 Pro is used here and it’s loaded onto a 32GB SanDisk P4 solid-state drive. Performance is on par with a budget netbook: The AMD C-50 chip produced test results around the same as a 1.6GHz single-core Intel Atom. It lasted 3 hours 22 minutes on our tough UserBench Battery test, which is average for a tablet.
As for how it feels, at 944g for the tablet alone, you’d have to say it’s on the heavy side, especially compared with the iPad 2’s 600g weight. However, our biggest issue is with Windows 7: we keep saying it, but you just can’t throw a desktop OS on a tablet and expect it to be easy to manipulate by touch alone.
Unlike iOS or Android, you need to be quite precise in pressing icons or links because it isn’t really a tablet OS. Sure, you can run almost any Windows app on it, but they’ll work much better with a mouse. Bring on Windows 8.
