Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by the Corsair Voyager air the high-performance wireless media hub for your connected life visit Corsair comm / Voyager - air to learn more so what was missing on Windows 8 or Windows RT devices compared to Android devices so you could make an argument for quite a few things but I would say that one of the big ones was variety early on when Microsoft released Windows 8 and Windows RT they only had a specification for how the operating system was supposed to work for down to a 10 inch tablet so that's why you saw so many devices in that size range the way that the menus were designed to work the way multitasking was designed to work wasn't made for smaller tablets that's all changed as of around Computex this year and Acer's first response to this need for smaller Windows devices is the w3 tablet so we're going to go ahead and fire this bad boy up and see what we think of it now like some of my unboxings lately you can see that the packaging has been removed also the device might look like it's been used for a bit because I have done that thing so this is the packaging that you would normally find on it here is the do not discard thing with your product key which I'm of course covering up for you know safety and then we've also got a QuickStart guide a power adapter and see if I can get this out of the yeah there we go I don't have broken a little bit and the piece that that goes into so this allows Acer to easily adapt for different regions so power adapters pretty much what you'd expect and I think that's pretty much it in terms of accessories so physically the device shouldn't be too surprising if you've seen a tablet in the last five years or so what can I say it's pretty thin okay so here's an HTC One for comparison not by any stretch of the matte imagination as thin as something like an iPad Mini but it's a bit of a different device it's meant to be more of a Productivity device as opposed to the iPad Mini feels more like an entertainment you know mobile gaming platform or mobile media consumption platform right here is where you'll see it at HTC one in terms of screen size so that's a five-inch screen compared to an 8-inch screen up on the top of the device we don't find anything particularly surprising a volume rocker as well as a microSD expansion slot it should be noted that Google's moving away from micro sd Apple has never really had any support for it but that doesn't seem to be the case with Windows devices at least at this point in time on the right-hand edge we find that this is a bit of an odd one so there's two speakers two stereo speakers here and here and then we've also got power in as well as a headphone microphone combo jack on the back of the unit we find in a shiny Acer logo just kind of a a pretty slick but it has a bit of grip to it so it's not completely glossy and slippery so a bit of a slick back as well as an InTown side sticker and a Windows 8 sticker we also find a 2 megapixel webcam both here and on the front here so this is um sort of sort of weird because you look at the Acer logo on the back here and it looks like okay this is an intended to be used as landscape device there's an Acer logo there but then the windows button is here so that looks more like a portrait device and then the stereo speakers are here in here which makes it look more like it's intended to be used in portrait mode as well and then your webcam is up there so maybe Acer was kind of hedging their bets going ok well maybe some people will use it landscape some people use it portrait and we're not going to put them into a box in terms of how they intend to use it but it gives you some challenges because for me for particularly when I'm consuming media I would hold it in landscape mode DAW and both of my stereo speakers are now on the right so I lose stereo which is sort of the point of putting two speakers on one of these devices and then if I was doing something like webcamming with with a relative I don't know maybe I would maybe I would hold it like this and then I can sort of thumb type so I guess I understand the orientation of the webcam up there but just the whole thing still feels a little bit a little bit a little bit weird to me Acer sent along a couple of accessories for us to check out while we were spending some time with the w3 so this one right here is a case protective case I think I joked about this on Twitter when I originally got the shipment because I had just dropped my HTC one and I was like really you dropped one phone and every manufacturer sends you a protective case for the samples that they lend you geez anyway so it fits in here pretty pretty easily actually it's similar to the W 700 that I'm using right now over here to display my notes for this particular unboxing so all it does is there's a spot for the webcam right there it clips into the plastic shell piece and then I could do a couple of options in terms of whether you want to just close it it's got kind of a pleather II feel to it overall so you can do that or you can prop it up this way for more like sitting and typing there we go it looks a little something like that no I don't want to restart right now I'm in the middle of unboxing Windows 8 okay or you can put it all the way down and that would be more like a content consumption or or touch screen sort of interface mode now I want to talk specs as well so it has an atom's e27 sixty two gigs of memory so it's a 1.5 gigahertz base 1.8 gigahertz boost processor it's got 32 gigs or 64 gigs of SSD storage so that's going to be e MMC that's not going to be a full-blown SSD but it's fast enough for the sort of portable 8-inch touchscreen experience they're quoting an eight hour battery life uses wireless n as well as Bluetooth 4.0 to communicate with various things such as the keyboard accessories so this is actually a pretty neat little keyboard it is able to do a couple of things pretty well so number one is it's reasonably comfortable to type on which you wouldn't expect for an 8-inch tablet keyboard however it's quite a bit larger than the keyboard so it's not as portable I think it takes away from the mobility of the device a little bit but what's good about it is the fact that because the device comes with office home and student which i think is a really really cool add-on it turns it into something that's more than just a way to watch movies on the plane but something that you can actually get a little bit of work done on compared to most tablets particularly in this size range it actually clips on to the tablet itself just like this there we go so here I'll show you guys how this works so the the to speak down there that might be part of the reason for the design there go there and then it clips into place so the screen itself is actually protected and then you can carry around the whole thing like this maybe stuff it into a bag or whatever else but the weight and size starts to become more like something like a netbook class product as opposed to as opposed to something like a tablet with a wireless keyboard that goes with it now I've made it this far in without criticizing it yet but I have to do it unfortunately the w3 uses a TN panel and particularly in something like a mobile device where you're out and about and you can't necessarily guarantee that you're going to be viewing it from the optimal angle I do find that to be a bit of a deficiency in this product so I'll give you guys some idea of what the viewing angles are like here I'm just going to go over there so you can see that we start to see at probably around 60 degrees we start to get inverted colors sideways and then when we tilt up and down yeah we definitely see those those characteristics of TN panels really shine through with that said it should be noted that IPS panels are more expensive so it's it's a give or take do you want a tablet that's small and portable and reasonably powerful comes with office or would you rather it had a nicer screen and you'll get your own copy of office ultimately it's up to you however there aren't really that many options out there comparable to the w7 or the w3 right now so yeah there you go thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look of the w3 from acer don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos