Acer Iconia W4 review

Acer Iconia W4 review

Acer Iconia W4-820-2466

 $350.00

Acer’s Iconia W4 is a big step up from its predecessor, but it doesn't stand out among the current crowd of 8-inch Windows tablets.

It’s been less than a year since Microsoft handed out Acer’s Iconia W3 tablet to developers attending its Build 2013 conference. The Iconia W3, powered by an Intel Cedar Trail-class processor, delivered less-than-stellar performance, too-short battery life, and was saddled with a mediocre display.

Fortunately for Microsoft, none of that seems to have hindered its effort to interest other manufacturers in building Windows 8 tablets. Acer has at least half-a-dozen competitors today, and its latest effort—the Iconia W4—is much better than last year’s model.

Most of the 8-inch Windows tablets are simple black slabs with a few ports around the edges and a capacitive Windows button on the bezel. Acer's engineers mix it up with a touch of gray edging around the screen and a wider strip at the bottom that houses a physical Windows button. I really enjoyed having a real button to wake the tablet from sleep mode or to take me back to the Windows Start screen.

Specifications:

The Iconia W4’s specs, on the other hand, will sound very familiar to anyone who’s been watching the 8-inch Windows tablet market. It’s powered by a Bay Trail-class Atom Z3740 with 2GB of DDR3 memory, and it’s available with either 32GB or 64GB of storage (Acer sent the Iconia W4-820-2466, which has 64GB).

The new processor fixes the performance and battery-life complaints people had about the Iconia W3, and its 1280x800 IPS display is much brighter and delivers better off-axis viewing angles.

While the Iconia W4’s IPS display is a huge improvement over the W3's screen, I found it to be one of the weakest of the current generation. Viewing angles are good, as is the range of brightness, but there is a lot of light bleed around the edges, and the screen flickers every few minutes at the lowest brightness. That turned out to be very distracting during late-night reading. I didn’t encounter any problems at any other brightness settings.

The Iconia W4 is also outfitted with a 5-megapixel (MP) rear camera, a 2MP front-facing camera, 802.11n Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth, a micro SD card slot, and a micro USB port. Here again, that’s on a par with the competition. Acer goes one better than most Windows 8 tablets, however, by providing a micro HDMI port. Toshiba’s Encore 8 also has HDMI out, which makes it a breeze to use the tablet with a large-screen monitor or an HDTV. The ports are laid out well if you'd like to set the tablet on a stand and plug lots of things in at your desk, although I do wish the USB/power port didn’t end up on the bottom when the tablet is in portrait mode.

The W4 ran for 6 hours and 51 minutes on our rundown test, which is one of the shortest run times we've seen on an 8 inch tablet, though not by much. The Toshiba Encore (if you must have HDMI out) will get you just a few extra minutes, and the Dell Venue 8 Pro will last for a couple hours longer (if you don’t care about HDMI out). The W4 will last a full day if you can tolerate some low battery warnings by the evening, but it's nothing close to the 10 hours of run time you'll get from Lenovo's Miix 2 8.