Acer Iconia W700 review

Benchmarks
Battery eater: 284
Cinebench: 3716
3D Mark: 1785

In terms of performance, the Acer Iconia W700 struggled, and we were disappointed to see less power from it than from Ultrabooks in the same category.

High-end Ultrabooks packing an Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core i7 processor would produce a score of around 9,000 in Cinebench, which is ideal for heavy image editing, dealing with video and multi-tasking full Windows apps such as Photoshop and Microsoft Word.

With its Intel Core i3 chip, the Iconia W700 stuttered to a disappointing score of 3,716.

This makes it hard to recommend for people who plan to use this hybrid device for heavy grunt work, which is a shame, since the point of the W700 seems to be to replace your existing Windows machine and solve the need for a separate tablet.

With an Intel Core i3 processor handling all the processing and the graphics - remember there's no discreet solution here, folks - our 3D Mark produced a pretty derisory score as well.

The W700 managed just 1,785, and the cycle of tests resembled a PowerPoint presentation on 90s gaming rather than an exploration of 3D rendering.

It means we have serious doubts about the ability of the W700 to handle any types of gaming, beyond anything from the Windows Store.

Of course, there is an Intel Core i5 version of the W700 available, which would improve on these worrying results, but you can expect to pay a premium of £150/US$100 or more.

The pay off of such basic performance is excellent battery life, which matches some of the best performing laptops such as the Dell XPS 13. This will suit anyone who intends to work away from the mains electricity.

Our harsh tests, which involve looping HD video and simulating office tasks, produced a cycle of 284 minutes, and under less extreme conditions one could easily expect five to six hours of use.