Saturday, April 13, 2013

Impressions of the Acer Iconia W510 after 2 weeks


Having owned the Acer W510 for over two weeks now, I thought I'd give an update of my experience with the tablet. Now, my intention was to use the W510 exclusively when I bought it, but I must confess that hasn't been the case. A combination of travelling overseas for a wedding (where the W510 mainly sat unused in my bag), and my unreasonable addiction to Sims 3 on the iPad, meant that I didn't give the Acer tablet the undivided attention that the other gadgets I've been testing did...so I might try a full week starting tomorrow. For now, I just thought I'd build on and amend the thoughts I had of the W510 from when I first got it.

Pretty much the things I liked about the W510 have not changed, and although I haven't used a timer to determine battery life, I find it has been enough to last me a night of watching Youtube videos on one panel, while keeping an eye on my twitter feed in the other. The battery life has been good enough that I haven't had to use while attached to charger, provided I charge it before I go to bed. Charging seems to be pretty swift - I'll be draining the battery overnight so I can actually time how long it takes to charge it from empty...will update when I have numbers. Update 14th April 2013 - it takes 3hrs 45mins to go completely from 0 to 100%, though it only took 2hrs 26mins to get it to 88%.

As for the negatives, the main one that worried me was the heat that I experienced coming from the top right of the tablet when charging - when I first got the W510 the heat was so intense that it was not comfortable to touch that part of the screen. Fortunately (perhaps by a BIOS update that I was prompted to install, or one of the many windows updates installed since then), I haven't experienced this issue again. When under load the section does get warm, but nowhere near the temperatures that made me worried. 

As for the build quality and the location of the speakers, they still irk me, but I've made my peace with them; with the latter issue, I just make sure to remember to not to press my palms completely over the speaker grills if I'm watching youtube videos, or better yet, just place the tablet on a stand.

If I was to complain about something, it's that the Apps that tend to use in my other tablets are either absent (Marvel comics, Sims 3 Freeplay, Vevo, Youtube), or not quite to the same standard as in iOS or Android app stores (Twitter, Buzzfeed). Fortunately (with the exception of the first two apps) I've been able to make do by viewing the content directly from the web, but I find that websites aren't as tablet friendly as they could be on the app versions, so I hold out hope that these apps will eventually make it to the store.

Am I happy with the W510? Yes - it's a good little tablet that also happens to be a full PC when I need it to be, but I do hope that more of the tablet/touch optimised apps that I use in my other tablets make it to the Windows store. 


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