I previously highlighted AMD Temash as a potentially good platform for a mobile Windows 8 experience and after my first tests today I’m more convinced that we’ll see some interesting high-value Windows 8 designs including low-cost touch-enabled tablets. I’ve just received an Acer Aspire V5-122P running on the Temash platform (A6-1450) and have some first test results and thoughts for you in a video.
Update: Detailed A6-1450 performance tests are being performed here.
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Acer has updated its range of Aspire V series notebooks with new V5 models that come in various configurations and also introduced its new V7 series Ultrabook range.
Intel’s Bay Trail Atom chip is the successor to the Clover Trail Atom CPU that currently powers a number of Windows 8 devices and is expected to provide a significant performance boost over its predecessor, could Acer be among the first manufacturers to release a Bay Trail device? If a recent rumored device is indeed real the answer could be yes. Meet the Bay Trail powered Acer WT5.
Welcome back to the story of the UMPC. We left the story early in 2011 with the Viliv X70EX UMPC a 7-inch Windows 7 tablet running on Intel Atom. In the meantime we’ve seen a few niche products come and go and we’ve discussed the potential for a 7-inch ultra mobile PC on Clovertrail. Today we pick the story up again with the Acer Iconia W3.
There’s no question that the Acer W510 is now stable enough, has huge amounts of battery power and is portable enough to be a real advantage for a mobile blogger but is it good enough in other departments, namely CPU, storage and keyboard? Can this 1300gm dockable do the business?
[Update below]
The Acer W510 is an Intel Clovertrail-based tablet with docking keyboard and battery. Not only is the tablet very efficient at running Windows 8 but there’s a total of 60Wh of battery in total, equivalent to a good 6-cell on a netbook. That’s a huge amount for such a small device and combined with super efficiency and Connected Standby is means there should be absolutely no need for a power cable during a 16hours period of working typical for the sort of trade-show working I’m thinking of next week at MWC in Barcelona.
But is it comfortable enough? Under the pressure of having to get videos and blog posts out as soon as possible is the keyboard and CPU combination a borderline one at the best of times going to cause me to, well, lose productiity? Or is the portability and battery life going to be worth the potentially longer video rendering times, the raised stress levels when typing and the annoyance at applications that don’t start up immediately. The Wi-Fi isn’t professional-grade either!
There are other things to think about too.
Ethernet You want to be able to connect via cable to get those videos up as quickly as possible. Solution USB Ethernet cable. I’m using it right now!
3G Built-in 3G would be really good. The W511 has it but I really can’t afford to trade-up right now. The good old MiFi unit, tied to a battery pack, will have to do 3G duties.
Cam Forget using a cam on any tablet for good quality YouTube videos. There’s no zoom, no stabilisation and generally very poor optics. Even my Nokia 808 isn’t good enough. You need mechanical stabilisation if you want to shoot products in low-light so I’ll be using my tried and tested Panasonic FZ150 bridge camera. It’s been fantastic over the last year or so.
SD card slot An SD card slot is a must-have for all my PCs but the W510 doesn’t have one. It has a Micro-SD slot but that’s not going to help with the 16GB SD card I’ve got in the FZ150. The only answer is a USB SD card adaptor, and the mini USB cable adaptor that was supplied with the Acer W510. There’s room for problems here so I’ll take the USB cable for the camera too.
Storage I’ve got some clearing up to do. 20Gb free space should be enough though as I don’t archive original video footage once it’s uploaded to YouTube.
Is there a better solution than the ASUS W510? Ye I believe there is in the 11.6 inch Clovertrail devices that have docking keyboard with additional battery capacity. The HP Envy X2 and ASUS Vivo Tab Smart are are two on my list but I haven’t got either of those so the W510 it is.
Here’s the software pack I need.
At the end of the day though I’m here to test, to learn and to tell you what works and what doesn’t. I plan to work a full day tomorrow with the W510 and then make a final decision on whether it should be my MWC reporting PC.
Any thoughts on the setup?
More mobile reporting kits here.
Update: After a few hours going hard with the keyboard I’ve decided the W510 isn’t working out. Not only does the mousepad have the well-know hardware issue but I’m getting occasional repeated keys. Every praragraph or so one of the keys characters will repeat on the screen between 10 and 20 times! The Acer W510 needs to go back but the good news is that I had some luck exchanging the Samsung ATIV 500T today. I upgraded to 3G too. This is the device i’ll be testing all day tomorrow. Already I know that the keyboard and mouse (which includes multitouch gestures) is way more comfortable than the W510. In fact it’s pretty much exactly the same keyboard as you get on a Samsung Series5 Ultrabook. I get on really well with that keyboard so fingers crossed. More on my Samsung ATIV 500T testing here.
The Acer Iconia W510 Tablet review went out a few weeks ago and since then I’ve had a driver-set update that is worth mentioning. I can also add that I’m still using the W510. It’s really finding a place in my life.
Acer W510 Driver Set V2.04 (08 Jan) is available here and I advise everyone with the W510 to update.
The main feature here is that there’s a huge improvement in stability and it appears that the audio problem is fixed.
The touchpad response, for me, is still a problem and likely to be a hardware issue as it’s still locking into a vertical plane occasionally.
The drivers don’t seem to improve WiFi performance for me either although I’m not having a problem in my main zones of use (at home.)
As for general usage I’m finding the tablet getting a lot of use at home and it’s replacing my (old) 7 inch tablet for a lot of activities. I’m trusting financial transactions to the browser too which is something I rarely do in Android. I’ve found a good set of apps too.
Very importantly though i’m still not using the Acer W510 for any sort of document creation and have decided I won’t risk doing any sort of mobile productivity with the device. I’ve looked at a 11.6 inch Lenovo Lynx but based on the poor keyboard, that’s going back. I’m struggling to find a Clovertrail tablet with a really good keyboard and a built-in battery although I haven’t done extended testing with the HP Envy X2 yet. Anyone?
599 Euro was a great price for the Acer W510 with docking station, despite the cramped keyboard. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it as I’m looking to test a few other Clovertrail and Core devices soon but for the time being, I’m happy with the stability, value-for-money and completely spoiled with the battery life. I tested the ASUS Taichi 21 recently and the 3.5hrs of battery life on that (in exactly the same total weight) is shockingly bad in comparison.
Any W510 owners out there care to put a few comments below? How’s the experience for you?
The Acer Iconia Tab has been here for over a month now. Bought as a Clovertrail test device it has turned into a surprisingly usable and flexible ultra-mobile PC. The Acer W510 might be using the same Atom core as netbooks did but the package here is far more than that both in terms of computing and usage flexibility. Read on for the full review of the Acer Iconia W510 and a summary of where this ground-breaking style of smart and ultra mobile PC fits into the market.
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For some people it’s more important to be mobile with all-day, all-scenario capability at the expense of processing power or speed. For others, the most important thing is to be able to carry desktop power. Intel Atom and Intel Core separate these two areas of computing cleanly but how big is the difference in platform performance? I took the chance to test the Acer W510 alongside an Ultrabook convertible the Lenovo Thinkpad Twist. Both devices have strengths, and weaknesses.
A copy of this article also appears on our sister site, Ultrabooknews.
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