Gadgetory

heiser has gotten a Windows 8 tablet that may not be the prettiest on the block but it's got a battery that won't let you down i'm dan ackerman and this is the acer iconia w4 now this is a sequel to a system called e acer iconia w3 that i reviewed last year and i liked it as a good early example of what you could do in an 8-inch tablet windows 8 but it really didn't quite hit the spot and a lot of systems that came out after that did a lot better in terms of design in terms of price in terms of battery life in terms of features here with the W 480 actually catches up on a lot of these things it's still a little thicker and a little heavier than a lot of these products it's got a 1280 x 800 screen you know pretty responsive touchscreen even though it's got that Intel Atom processor although really any of these intel atom or even intel celeron smaller windows 8 laptops hybrids and tablets they're actually all very responsive especially if you stick to the windows 8 I love you and the apps that are kind of custom optimized for that what really helps this w4 stand out is that you get a 64 gig SSD and that's about twice as big as what you get with a lot of the other similar systems like this even though they keep the price down to around 299 which seems pretty fair to me you've also got some reports of connections that a lot of the other Windows 8 tablet so you get micro or mini versions of HDMI USB and an SD card slot all built right in here along the edges which makes it fairly convenient to use although you will have to carry around some like you know dongles and adapters if you want to make use of these different ports one thing that's very different about this system is that it's got an actual physical windows button down here as opposed to simply the capacitive touch button that a lot of other tablets have for their windows button and you use that to get between the different apps that you're reading or using and back to that Windows 8 Start screen so even though there's new version is a lot better than the original 8 inch windows Tabitha days to put out last year it's still kind of clunky and think it's got this weird sort of raised lip here by the screen that just doesn't feel right in the hand however the battery ran for more than eight hours on our fairly challenging test and that's the longest battery life we've seen from one of the current crop of Windows 8 tablets so if you need to carry this around at work all day is not let you down i'm dan ackerman and that's the acer iconia w4