I am an electrical engineer, so i'm kinda geeky and technology oriented. I was looking for a tablet that can be used to do some real work, install some softwares i need, and I want a tablet with highest price-performance ratio.
Apple Ipad is for entertainment and have low price-performance ratio. Android tablet has decent price-performance ratio, but i can't install softwares,(apps are not really considered softwares to me). So my choice is the only Windows tablet and i came across this one. After checking out other reviews and youtube videos, i bought this immediately when there was a deal. Here's my experience after using this a while:
Fantastic Fantastic Tablet!
The hardware: AMD C-50 apu is really doing a good job, 2 GB ram at 1066MHz and a SSD is simply fast enough. I have workstation with AMD 6 core CPU, 16GB 1333MHz ram and SSD with r/w speed of 250MB, which is lightening fast.With comparison, i have to say that the tablet is pretty good! Of course it's slower, but definitely within my tolerance range.
The screen: beautiful and bright. i have IPS monitors, but still find the tablet screen to be very sharp and crisp. Personally, i don't like glossy screen, too shinny for me, but that's me. Touch is very sensitive and accurate.
The battery: upto 3 hrs of straight video playing. With power save mode, i can get 5-6 hrs of normal use, ie,surfing internet with wifi on,running some programs, reading pdfs. You can't charge this with a USB, that's not really a downside for the tablet, since USB port output power is simply not enough. Ipad and android tablet has ARM architecture which have much lower power consumption compare to the laptops or netbooks that have x-86 architecture.You'll never see a laptop that have USB charging function.
The keyboard: a bit small, but you'll get used to it. Can be very handy when working on some Word documents. but, dock and undock process can be cumbersome, and the screen tilt is fixed when docked.
The speaker: loud, the sound quality is decent.
The camera: the tablet came with front and rear 1.3MP camera, you can do video chat with it, the picture quality is not that great, but i personally don't care. for emergency, i can just use the cellphone camera, for other case, i have a DSLR.
Other: the tablet does have ventilation, but it's very quite even when CPU is 100%
My usage for this tablet:
I used this tablet to do 3D-design work. Yes you heard me. Since this APU have a HD6250 gpu inside, it handles 3D graphics very well, 3D structure rotation,zooming all works pretty smooth.
I also installed Hamachi software to create a vitual LAN between this tablet and my workstation. Then i remote control my workstation from the tablet. So once i get my 3D design finished on my tablet, i'll send the design to my workstation to let it simulate for hours(very CPU and RAM intensive, so tablet can't handle and it's not intended anyway). If you have a smartphone like android, you can turn your phone into a mobile wifi hotspot, so the file transfer can be done anytime, anywhere. Very convenient! Windows tablet shines when it comes to real work.
I use it as an e-reader as well, holding it is a little bit heavy, so you can grab a tablet stand, put it on the docking station or just put it on table. if you go to school, you can use this to take note by hand writing, just get a stylus pen. You can also install MS office suite for obvious reasons.
Internet surfing is smooth, i would prefer to turn the smartphone into a wifi hotspot and use the tablet to surf, much better experience.
The tablet have 2 usb2.0 ports, so you can transfer files to/from other device, even charging your dead cellphone,lol.
Watching video is also nice, playing 720p very smoothly.
Major Pros: VERY HIGH price-performance ratio, good hardware spec, using win 7 can get some real work done , nice screen, docking keyboard is handy, having USB 2.0 ports IS GREAT
Major Cons: a bit heavy, isn't the best look tablet(which i dun care :P), docking and undocking can be cumbersome, screen is a fingerprint magnet
I can't really comment on the reliability of the acer product, since i haven't use this for that long. So far so good, i'm very satisfied with the purchase and would recommend this tablet to anyone.
additional update:
I would like further comment on the tablet. The screen is a fingerprint magnet, but the back of the tablet is not. The back is made of plastic, have a ok touch feeling. It's not as fancy as Ipad's metallic back, but Ipad trades off wireless signal strength for the looks.
I'm a cellphone antenna designer, and large metal piece could be bad for antennas, it act as shield to block out the signals. So Ipad does have signal strength problems which ppl complains about losing wifi connection(do a google search:iPad WiFi Woes - Myth or Reality?), because there's freaking large piece of signal blocker. So if the wifi signal is from a particular angle, you may have weak wifi signal. Therefore, many manufactures sticks to plastics,ie, thinkpad,dell's inspiron. Plastics is cheaper to make and have less signal problems.Maybe it's less aesthetic then shinny metallic looks,but when you frequently losing or having weak wifi connections, you'll find this to be very annoying and frustrating.
For this tablet, wifi signal strength and range is great. I had 1MB/s download speed.
Tips: install programs on SSD, get a SD card, move my documents,my music...etc, all the storage related folders to SD, incase you need to reinstall win 7 on tablet, you don't lose anything.
do a optimization for SSD, stop unnecessary programs that runs on startup, so you tablet runs faster~
for gesture controls, you can customize win7 build-in gesture control called flicks, you can also download a very useful software called flicks2, it greatly extends the number of gestures you can use, quite convenient