Notebook Hunter

The omission of 3G wireless has driven down the price of the Acer Iconia Tab W500, but for $899 this tablet is still rather expensive. It has the novel addition of a keyboard, and while functional the overall package is very expensive.

Powering the W500 is an AMD Fusion C-50 (1GHz) processor, which along with the integrated AMD Radeon HD 6250 graphics card does well running Windows 7 Home Premium. However, for a tablet that operating system is less than ideal because it doesn’t have the fine optimisation that operating systems like Android Honeycomb and iOS have.  The combination of a capacitive 10.1in (1,280x800 resolution) screen and a detachable keyboard is novel, the price needs to be lower before it can compete with pure tablets and ultraportable notebooks. The specs are generally good though, and include 2GB of RAM and a 32GB flash drive.

Ports are excellent though; you get a fast Ethernet port, a HDMI port, four USB 2.0 ports and an audio jack. This is directly comparable to an ultraportable and is better than the majority of other tablets available. There’s also a camera, microphone, stereo speakers and a 2-in-1 card reader. At the end of the day though this interesting concept still has some work before it can compete with the alternatives.

The W501 has 3G, but for $999 it's more expensive than what's an already rather pricey tablet. The specs are otherwise the same, so if you can snag a significant discount you'll still be able to get a good bargain.