Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB W500 10.1 inch LED Tablet (AMD-C50 Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB HDD, Wireless, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit)
Feature
- Processor clock speed: 1000 MHz
- Processor model: C-50
- Processor family: AMD Dual-Core
- L2 cache: 1 MB
- Internal memory: 2048 MB
78 of 79 people found the following review helpful
Quite good actually, By
P. Blythe (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB W500 10.1 inch LED Tablet (AMD-C50 Dual Core, 2GB RAM, 32GB HDD, Wireless, Bluetooth, Win 7 Home Premium 32-bit) + Keyboard (Personal Computers)
Acer's Iconia Tab W500 is a nice tablet to use, a little bit bulkier and heavier than the iPad and Android equivalent, but none the worse for it. Of course your getting the ever resource hungry Windows 7 Home premium as an OS, appears a lot of reviewers have an issue with Win' 7 on tablets but I've found the W500 runs smoothly thanks to the duel core AMD C50 cpu with intergrated Radeon 6250 gpu and 2GB of RAM.The 32GB Sandisk P4 mini PCI-E SSD is a touch on the small side (capacity) but seems speedy enough (30MB/160MB write/read speed) with the Windows install utilising just over 1/2 the space, extra storage is available in the form of the SD (not microSD) slot which will take upto a 32GB card (have heard that the 64GB SDXC cards work also). If a larger SSD is required, then the 80GB Intel 310 SSD (70MB/200MB write/read speed) would be the way to go, IMHO ...
With Windows installed and 2 fullsize USB ports, you have access to every device that you could wish for. If it works with Win' 7 it'll run on this tablet. If you feel the need to watch a movie on a bigger screen then just plug it into your TV via the HDMI port, simple :)
On first boot I removed 90% of Acer's installed software, the Acer Ring is a poor attempt at creating a dynamic, easy to use interface, it just slows things up and isn't needed. Want shortcuts to everything and anything, just creat a shortcut to it on the desktop, same as on your normal PC ... Leaving 'Device Control' and 'Auto Rotation Blocker' in place gives you acces to the power, wi-fi, bluetooth and brightness settings in one place and gives you the screen rotation function (redraw is about 2 seconds).
For me the keyboard dock is poorly impliemented and not worth the £80 premium, an ok wireless keyboard & mouse set can be had for £20 leaving you money for an SD card or external HDD.
All in, the W500 works well as a very mobile PC; the 10.1" touch screen is percise and sensitive, and along with the dedicated Windows Start button intuative to use. The touch-screen keyboard is easy to use and can be swapped to handwriting recognition if desired. It handles day-to-day stuff easily and I've had no issues running Photoshop Elements 9, plus my colour callibration software with an X-rite Display 2 works faultlessly. As an E-Reader I've had no issues with the screen (2-3 hour reading sessions) but its weight does get a little uncomfortable after a while and you'll be looking for some kind of prop to rest it on.
For me this is the best of two worlds, with a little time spent tweeking Windows its smooth and easy to use as an iPad etc. but as functional as a desktop PC ... No issues in use and have had no faults to report, no system conflicts or crashes, boots first time, every time in just under a minute. It's been just about perfect so far.
The battery is lasting roughly 5 hours with mixed usage (mainly internet & movies) but when purely reading e-books this jumps to near 8 hours.
There is a down side ... it could be a little lighter for more comfortable prolonged hand-held use and a higher capacity HDD would have been nice. The screen can be a pain in very bright situations (same as every glossy device screen), some kind of anti-reflection coating would be nice (can you get a matt screen protector that does that?!). Maybe on the next version ...
*Updated to reflect over a months day-to-day usage*
Not the very best out there, but no where near the worst of them ... 4.5/5
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Its actually really good!!, By
Andreas Iacovou (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB W500 10.1 inch LED Tablet (AMD-C50 Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB HDD, Wireless, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit) (Personal Computers)
Been looking for a decent Windows tablet for a while. I thought i`d found it when I bought the Asus EP121 earlier this month but it has some reliability issues so had to return it and didn`t want to risk another one, so I tried this one and to be honest was not expecting to like it.Its unusually big for a 10.1" tablet due to its ridiculously large bezel but is relatively lightweight which is good. Build quality is above average and the screen is fantasic, bright and has good range of viewing angles. I did not bother with the keyboard dock as I do not believe this to be worth the £80 premium and instead use my trusted bluetooth keyboard which works perfectly.
I was a little aprehensive about the AMD 1Ghz processor but it is actually quite nippy and is certainly faster than the Atom N550 which the Dell Inspiron Duo uses. Normal tasks within Windows are handled easily and the tablet also uses a half decent graphics card which handles the video when running them, leaving the processor to handle the other functions.
Overall this is as good a Windows tablet as you will find at the moment, unless you are willing to spend £1000 for the Asus and risk potential reliability issues. I am left feeling quite good about my purchase and also know that when Windows 8 becomes available in a few months I will have no problems upgrading the OS.
Finally a comment on battery life. For a Windows 7 tablet this is impressive. I get just under 5 hours with wifi on and mainly browsing, emails etc. Yet its no iPad or Xoom in terms of battery life but when comparing to other Windows tablets such as the Asus EP121 (which gave me around 3 hours) this is impressive. Recommending this if you are specifically looking for a Windows tablet, its the best out there in this price range.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Patience with the W500 reaps rewards, By
R Young (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Acer Aspire ICONIA TAB W500 10.1 inch LED Tablet (AMD-C50 Dual Core Processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB HDD, Wireless, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit) (Personal Computers)
There is a reason why most online magazine reviews of the Iconia W500 are luke warm, yet the customer reviews here (and at Amazon USA) are almost all positive. Out of the box it can be a shockingly poor experience. The preloaded Windows 7 takes up almost half of the already tiny amount of 32 gb of internal SSD memory. Savvy users will remove all the Acer bloatware, including the pointless Acer games, and all sorts of unnecessary gizmos which add nothing to efficiency or performance. Optimising the graphics for performance and removing Windows Aero sees a glimmer of improvement - but there are still lots of tasks left to optimise this tablet and turn it from a clumsy piece of kit into the slick hardware you wanted it to be:On powering up I was immediately disappointed by the cumbersome, laggy, slow-to-react scrolling, zooming and webpage loading that windows 7 inevitably provides, together with its ludicrously bloated 14+ gb standard installation. No wonder many tech websites reviews give this the thumbs down. And no wonder why the ipad, and competing android kit, gets so much more positive website reviews. But the tech website staff don't get the time to iron things out, and if they could be bothered to get under the W500's skin, they would perhaps be more glowing in their reviews.
The potential of the W500 is far greater than it indicates when you first use it. Patience and intelligent tweaking is the key. First and foremost, this is a fully useable windows machine. It has flash, shockwave and you can run any windows programme you wish, just as you do on your desktop computer. For people like me this is why we bypass the ipad, which is a consumer entertainment device and not a very useful gadget for serious computer work. I have one vital business application that contains all our customer databases, and this has to run on Windows - no android or Mac O/S will run it. There will be thousands of other users who are in the same situation, and an ipad, for all its wonderful qualities, doesn't cut it in this regard.
Here's what to do in order to turn the W500 from a lame duck into an impressive tablet:
1. Get rid of all the bloatware.
2. Shut down all unnecessary windows services.
3. Download Google Chrome for much better hand-gesture/swipe experience than Internet Explorer.
4. Use windows classic interface and disable windows aero.
5. Save every scrap of RAM you can by booting with minimum preloaded apps.
6. Right click on computer/properties and choose high performance option but retain smooth screen fonts.
7. Buy an inexpensive SD card to add 16 gb or preferably 32 or 64 gb external memory.
8. Open windows control panel and increase the size of the tabs for less fiddly navigation.
Just doing the above should result in doubling the smoothness of finger gesture based scrolling, zooming, page loading and the whole tablet experience.
More options for experienced Windows users
-------------------------------------------
Download and install Windows 8 Consumer preview. This free to use Windows 8 beta, which is time limited and will wipe most of your current Windows 7 setup, will give you a taste of what this tablet can really achieve when the final version of Win 8 is released. Windows 8 is geared for tablets. Once installed it is quite stable and will transform your tablet experience to the slick level of an ipad - but you still have all the power and flexibility of Windows 7, including being able to run most standard windows apps: email, office, and most of your own custom software.
CAUTION - CAUTION !!!!
The Iconia W500 has one serious flaw that can get you into trouble. The Bios is NOT hard coded onto a motherboard chip, but is located on the internal SSD drive. This is a major potential problem, because the Bios files can get corrupted, and you won't be able to boot up. There are recovery disks included but some users report that they do not always work. Even if you do not upgrade to Windows 8 there is a danger that the Bios can get corrupted anyway. This is a small risk but a real one. This is a monumentally stupid thing of Acer to do. The BIOS should always reside on an independent chip and NEVER on the hard drive.
Caution aside, running Windows 8 should not invalidate your warranty, whatever your vendor or Acer claim, since it is a valid microsoft O/S and conforms to this tablet's requirements. Warranty rules here only refer to hardware, not software, the only exception being if you try to install a non-native O/S like Android.
Immediately after installing Windows 8, you will experience an amazing transformation, and the W500 will run as slickly and smoothly as any ipad or premium Android tablet. If you do not want to take that risk, Windows 7 is perfectly fine for most functions, and you can wait for the official release of Windows 8 in the... Read more
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