Acer Iconia Tab W500 - Mismatched Tablet

Not Your Typical Tablet

Lately, when anyone mentions the word "tablets", two brands come to mind: Apple and Google. The former made a name for itself with the Apple iPad (and now iPad 2), paving the way to the resurrection of the tablet category. Google offers up an alternative choice with its Android operating system, bringing a refreshed approach on the Honeycomb variant (versions 3.x).

But not all tablets are synonymous with these two operating systems. While Acer has chosen Google's open-source OS for the Acer Iconia Tab A500, the company isn't keeping all its eggs in one basket. Its Windows 7 variant, the Acer Iconia Tab W500, was launched alongside its Android cousin, hoping to gain a bigger piece of the tablet market share.

However, prior experiences with Windows 7 on tablets haven't yielded praises for this particular combination. Is the Acer Iconia Tab W500, with its AMD C-50 1.0GHz dual-core Fusion processor, integrated Radeon HD6250 graphics and 2GB of DDR3 memory going to be any different? To answer that question, we'll start off with a cursory examination of its aesthetics.

Out of the box, the W500 looks very much like a netbook, or to be more precise, a very thick netbook. Its thick profile isn't a good match with the compact footprint of its 10.1-inch display. The benefit from this arrangement is two full-sized USB ports that are found on the sides.

The shocking revelation when we tried to bring up the screen, is how the unit immediately fell apart and separated into the tablet and keyboard components. Should you wish to close the W500, you have to separate the unit from the dock, flip the connector down, and fix the display with the slider lock. Not exactly an intuitive process to prep the tablet/netbook for usage or stowaway.

Thanks to its relatively thick profile, the W500 includes some much needed connectors. This includes the full-sized USB port to expand your storage options and even attach a USB mouse to ease the overall usage on the W500. And if you find yourself straining to read off the 10.1-inch display, there's the option to connect the tablet to a HDTV via its HDMI port.

Besides the earlier mentioned thick profile, the W500’s near 1kg weight for just the tablet component (970 grams to be exact) makes it one of the heaviest tablets recently launched. In short, it feels overly heavy for our liking, which is especially true when you hold it in one hand while the other attempts to navigate the Windows 7 interface on the W500. This essentially means that you won't want to hold onto the tablet for a prolonged period of time which might leave your arms aching.

Ultimately, the tablet is sufficient on its own. Your typical activities such as web surfing, videos and music can do without the keyboard. Yet, from what we've experienced, it seems like its usage is more fitting of a traditional netbook, with the keyboard dock totaling its overall weight to 1.35kg, further reinforced with the Windows OS usage and the AMD Fusion platform powering it. Let's take an even closer look over the next few pages to see if it can shed off this initial feeling.

Looking Through the Acer Window

Tablets, by themselves, might not be able to provide the complete experience one gets with a full-fledged notebook. For better or worse, Acer’s decision to include a keyboard dock and preloading Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium for the W500 was made to enhance the tablet experience.

And here’s where we question the soundness of these two decisions. In our opinion, the keyboard dock is a nice touch. While it lacks an integrated battery to recharge the W500 and extend its usability, the dock does give you the option to churn your documents out without the hassle of a virtual keyboard. Yet, our experience with the cramped keyboard says otherwise. Every keystroke required a conscious effort to check our word accuracy. Typing speeds were generally slower than usual, with each key seemingly fighting for space on the limited real estate.

Without a touchpad, the W500 opted for a small track button located on the center of the dock. We found the nipple mouse too stiff for efficient use. Fortunately, the dock also comes with two USB ports, giving us the option to connect a mouse.

Its operating system choice is a point of contention. While most tablets have chosen Google Android Honeycomb (which Acer also adopted with the Acer Iconia Tab A500), the W500 is powered by Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium. This isn’t the first Windows 7 tablet that was recently launched. Earlier on, we had a quick run with the Redfox WizPad, which also comes in two flavors. One of which, is Windows 7 Home Premium, and needless to say, we weren’t too impressed with how it handled Microsoft’s OS.

The W500 shares the same usability woes, and we spent more time trying to tap on the icons that aren’t optimized for its 10.1-inch screen. If you think about it, the mouse cursor is much more precise than our fingers, thus we would still prefer to use a USB mouse to interact with the tablet.

Against All Odds

The W500 is distinctly different from the recent tablet lineup for another reason: hardware. While we are seeing a mass adoption of NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core processors, the W500 is powered by the AMD Brazos range. The AMD C-50 model loaded on the W500 comes with a x86-class dual-core processor clocked at a speed of 1GHz, with an integrated Radeon HD6250 for graphics performance and 2GB of DDR3 RAM to handle multi-tasking performance. Overall, the W500 is seemingly loaded with an impressive spec sheet for a tablet, considering many others that don’t have the same raw memory and processing power.

But consider this - compared to the current Android tablets and even Apple’s iPad line, the W500 doesn’t exactly share much similarities with these tablets. Its overall hardware and software implementation points towards netbooks being its immediate comparison, especially those using the latest AMD platform. After all, if you take a netbook apart, give the screen touch input capability, transfer all of the processing capabilities behind its screen, and make the keyboard an add-on item, you pretty much have what the Acer Iconia Tab W500 is made up of. As such, our benchmarking performance is based on our notebook test criteria. For comparison, we chose Toshiba’s NB550D (an AMD Fusion platform like the W500), along with a predecessor platform based on the AMD Congo represented by the Acer Ferrari One notebook and lastly an NVIDIA Ion based nettop, the ASrock Nettop ION 330-BD to give an estimate of the W500’s overall performance.

PCMark Vantage

The scores gathered from PCMark Vantage turned up with no major surprises, with most of its numbers coming close to the Toshiba NB550D with identical specifications. If you are baffled by the high numbers from the HDD tests, do remember that the W500 is using flash memory for storage, which definitely puts it at an advantage when it comes to access speeds. This has also helped it in other test suites and a key reason why the W500 tablet seemed to score better than the Toshiba netbook.

Futuremark 3DMark06

While we aren’t likely to see the W500 used as a gaming machine, it’s good to know where it stands with its counterparts using the synthetic gaming benchmark 3DMark06. In the end, the 3DMark06 scores are a firm reminder that these portable machines aren’t suitable for gaming purposes - but still fare better than an Intel Atom based system. Comparing against the Toshiba and ASrock system, the Tab W500 stands between those two with its decent 1556 points on 3DMark06.

Battery Performance and Portability Index

With our standard battery test involving non-stop playback of a video clip on the Tab W500, we clocked 4 hours and 27 minutes of usage. Looking at its counterparts, the numbers do fit the bill, and this is consistent with the performance of some of the other NVIDIA-based tablets out there (like the A500). But we are considering how the W500 stacks up against its netbook and nettop counterparts with similar specifications. As we surmise from the numbers, the overall typical mileage is suitable for probably a day's usage on a full charge.

In our consideration of the portability, we've decided to measure its dimensions and weight with the keyboard to put it on a fair comparison against the other netbooks. Though the W500 fares slightly better in battery mileage, the overall portability takes a huge hit due to the added combined weight of 1.58kg and thickness of its keyboard dock. Needless to say, you might be better off with the tablet component, but you'll face more handling issues with its hefty 940g weight.

For comparison's sake, we also looked at how the W500 fared against other tablets that serve a similar key demographic. The recent lineup, which includes the Motorola Xoom, Acer A500 and ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, come with similar display sizes and weight to give it a more even comparison.

In this scenario, we only considered the W500's tablet component, given how the comparison lineup is limited to just the tablet form factor. Nonetheless, the results did not favor the Acer tablet, due to its hefty 970g weight and overall thick dimensions. In comparison, its Android counterparts, including Acer's own Acer Iconia Tab A500, performed better in the battery mileage and portability index with its compact form factor.

Iconic Disappointment

Are there just too many tablets in the market? Judging from the recent lineup, that’s a definite yes. Acer is just one of the many companies that have jumped onto the bandwagon. The good thing is they embraced this growing market early and tried to differentiate its Acer Iconia Tab W500. Deviating from the mainstream tablet crowd, Acer bundled a keyboard to complement the overall usability of its Windows 7 based tablet.

Though the concept is practical, the execution leaves much to be desired. The Tab W500 lacked the basic design element that allows intuitive use of its form factor. From the very start, we were baffled by the ease at which the tablet and keyboard components are separated. With no prior instructions, most users will experience a sudden shock at detaching the parts while expecting the top lid to swivel open akin to a notebook.

Once attached, our experience with the keyboard was an affair we’d more than prefer to forget. We had much difficulty in adjusting to the cramped layout of the keys. The absence of a track pad, in lieu of a small track button located in the center, did not sit too well with us. The dock’s inclusion of two full-sized USB ports did help to expand the peripheral range, including a USB mouse to navigate through Microsoft Windows 7 user interface.

And here’s where we had to second-guess Acer’s operating system choice for its Tab W500. Judging from our previous experiences, plonking the Microsoft OS hasn’t exactly done much to help boost the usability and sales of the tablet market. With both Apple iOS and Google Android dominating the scene, it just struck us as pretty odd that Acer would take the extra effort to present an alternative Windows 7 tablet on top of its Android Honeycomb-based Acer Iconia Tab A500.

Even with its 10.1-inch display, navigating through the Windows 7 UI is no easy task. Firstly, its various icons and program shortcuts isn’t exactly optimized for precise touch screen navigation. Some might say this streamlines your desktop experience with the tablet, but considering how much more effort is required to access basic functions such as the Windows Explorer using its touch screen, we’d have to disagree. Even netbooks as well as full-fledged notebook based tablets faced these similar concerns, and the W500 had to walk right into the same issue. Don't get us wrong. On one hand we do agree that a Windows 7 based system is more versatile at any given time. However one has to take note that the OS was never really designed for small screen usage and thus, this breaks the overall experience.

Without relying on the ARM architecture such as NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core processors, the Tab W500 has a seemingly stronger spec sheet to run the Windows OS with the AMD C-50 1.0GHz dual-core Fusion processor and 2GB of DDR3 RAM, which is twice the memory and processing power of most other tablets. By virtue of its hardware and software choice, the Tab W500 pits itself more with netbooks than tablets. Comparing its benchmark scores against systems of its class, the Tab W500 fared slightly better. Clocking about 4 hours and 27 minutes for its intensive it battery test, it’s on even ground with most of the tablets we’ve tested. In casual usage, it should last close to a day.

Ultimately, should you even consider the Acer Iconia Tab W500, which lacks the basic intuitiveness and questionable OS choice? With a price tag of S$988, we have to say there are much better options out there, mostly on the Android or iOS platforms. If you're really on the look out for netbooks, there are better options at far less price like the Toshiba NB550D which uses the same platform and costs half the amount. If you need a netbook that doubles up as a tablet, again there are better implementations that we've reviewed before.

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