Acer Iconia Tab W500 review

Despite being sold as a standalone 10.1in tablet, the keyboard attachment is imperative for many users to get the most out of the device. One of the major reasons for this is that Windows 7 was not designed to be used with a touch screen.
Our impressions of the W500 were mixed as it isn't as striking as the iPad 2. Technical specifications are impressive on paper, with an AMD C-50 dual-core 1GHz processor, 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 32GB of internal storage as standard.
The device comes with an overall Windows Experience Index rating of 2.8. Compare this to the Fujitsu Lifebook PH530's Windows Experience rating of 2.7, which is a slightly misleading score as the graphics capabilities brought the overall score down.

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The 10.1 widescreen LCD touch display comes with a resolution of 1,280x800, and has a bright picture thanks to the LED backlight. Surrounding the screen, however, is a large black bezel that looks like it could have been better used.
Our measurements suggest that Acer could have increased the screen size to 12 inches. The fact that the extra space hasn't been used is even more bizarre considering that the majority of this unused bezel is part of the LCD panel itself.
Other features built into the chassis include a two-in-one card reader, HDMI and USB 2.0 port as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Like all the latest tablets the W500 incorporates front- and rear-facing cameras, both at 1.3-megapixels.
Business users are likely to need the keyboard attachment most of the time. To connect the tablet, the screen slots into a USB connector into the keyboard, which appears when a flap is raised.
When the device is not in use, the flap on the keyboard can be folded down and the screen can be placed on top of it, locked in place and carried around like a netbook.
However, the problems start when the W500 is plugged into the keyboard. The device weighs 1kg but most of this is in the tablet, making it top heavy. The W500 needs to be placed on a completely flat surface otherwise there is a risk of it toppling over.

Using the W500 balanced on your lap is very tricky and great care has to be taken to ensure that the screen does not fall out of the dock. During our tests, we found that the W500 was incapable of sitting on the soft surface of a sofa or bed without falling over.
The W500 takes anywhere between five to 10 seconds to detect when a dock has been attached. Although this is not a long time, it gives the impression that the device is sluggish and is likely to get slower as time goes on.

The dockable keyboard itself is usable, but far from the best we have seen. It comes with 84 keys, two USB ports and an ethernet socket.
Letters are generally well spaced in a island style, but they are very shallow and it is easy to misspell words because letters have not been depressed sufficiently.
Unfortunately, there is no trackpad and you are forced to use the FineTrack trackball that sits in the centre of the keyboard. The two mouse buttons are also awkwardly placed on the edge of the keyboard and we found that we often hit the space bar instead of the left click.

For those who have not used a trackball before it will take some getting used to, and the experience can be described as fiddly at best. When using the W500 in the office, we found that plugging in a USB mouse was a necessity.
By comparison, the similarly sized 10.1 Asus Eee Pad Transformer hybrid comes with a full sized trackpad and the ability to fold the screen when the tablet is connected to the dock.


Considering that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer has dimensions of 271x171x12.98mm, which are very similar to the 275x190x15.95mm of the W500, it does feel that it has been left in the dirt by Asus.
Software
Acer ships the tablet with Windows 7 Home Premium, so it is not optimised for business use. However, it will provide a better desktop-like experience than other tablets.
The internet experience resembles that of laptops and netbooks, with access to all browsers such as IE9, Firefox 4, Chrome and Opera.
Preloaded software comes in the form of Microsoft Office Starter edition and the usual anti-virus software free trial. Another feature is the Acer Ring, an interface created to make use of the touch-screen functionality.
Users are able to browse the internet, and access applications such as notetaking, camera and the calculator, from the Acer Ring. The My Journal feature is an aggregator that keeps web site updates, and Clear.fi allows users to search, share, and play back music and video over Wi-Fi.
The onscreen keyboard is the same as on all Windows touch-based devices. It is easy enough to type web addresses, but is not suited to long emails. It is very poor indeed when compared to the virtual keyboards on the iPad and Android tablets.
Battery life fell short of the six hours claimed by Acer and this was disappointing especially when its portability is being touted. The W500 lasted a reasonable two hours and 49 minutes in the the Battery Eater Pro Classic test, which simulates high-intensity activity.
In the Reader test, the device topped out at three hours and 21 minutes. Realistically, the battery will last somewhere between these two figures when the dock is connected.

When we used the W500 in the office as a desktop replacement it managed three hours and 20 minutes with 36 mins of hibernation, backing up the result of the reader test.
In comparison, the Android Honeycomb Asus Eee Pad Transformer offers up to 16 hours of battery life when plugged into the dock, and the forthcoming Motorola Atrix lapdock aims to provide up to eight hours.
The iPad 2, meanwhile, lasted 20 hours during our testing. We clocked nine hours of actual use including browsing the internet over Wi-Fi and 3G, watching three hours of video from BBC iPlayer and a two-hour film. The remaining 11 hours were spent in standby, eight hours of which was overnight.
The design flaws together with a total price of £519 to get the dock could put off some users, however the fact that the tablet runs Windows could make it attractive to businesses.

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