Acer Iconia W510 review

More tablet than convertible ultrabook, unfortunately

Acer Iconia W510
Acer Iconia W510

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The Acer Iconia W510 has Intel inside, but not a chip we've seen in awhile. It runs on the Atom processor, which was introduced a few years ago with the first wave of netbooks. This is, of course, an updated version, but at just 1.8 GHz dual-core, it's not terribly modern.

OS: Windows 8Processor: AtomDisplay: 1366 x 768Graphics: Intel GMA 3650RAM: 2 GBStorage: 64GB SSDWeight: 1.32 pounds (0.59 kg)

The Atom is supported by 2GB of RAM and you've got 64GB of SSD to fill up, minus the space taken up by Windows 8 and few Acer applications.

Performance

This low-energy processor does wonders for the Iconia W510's battery life, but it makes for inconsistent performance, especially when multitasking. Browsing in either Internet Explorer or Google Chrome was a pleasant experience when it was the only thing we were doing. With three or more programs active at once, websites loaded in a herky jerky fashion. Sometimes a page displayed quickly, but the machine would take a few seconds before we could scroll or click a link.

Acer Iconia W510 review

The Iconia W510 with AC adapter

The Iconia W510 handled games like Angry Birds: Star Wars and Where's My Water just fine, but the machine's specs limit you tablet titles. Real PC gaming is basically out of the question. We were able to get playable framerates in the eight year old Half-Life 2, but anything more modern than that, such as Far Cry 2, proved too much for it to handle. The W510 is capable of basic Photoshop use, but forget about doing any sort of HD rendering.

However, that power-sipping processor does have one massive benefit: great battery life. Acer's estimation is 18 hours when using the dock, and we generally got numbers just slightly south of that. The W510 consistently pulled 16 hour days, with use ranging from word processing, email, web browsing and some Netflix and YouTube streaming.

Acer Iconia W510 review

The W510 is a tablet at heart

Using just the tablet still results in very respectable battery performance. We averaged 8 hours when going dockless. The W510 might be unpowered, but it's certainly not unreliable.