If you're looking for a laptop that can double as a tablet, the market is saturated with quality devices. Both the Lenovo Yoga Pro 3 ($1,099, £1,099, AUS$1,254) and Asus Transformer Book T300 Chi ($899, £601, AU$1,156) compete in a market led by the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 (starting at $799, £639, AU$979).
For those consumers who want the flexibility of a hybrid without the bells and whistles (and price tag) that come with the top-of-the-line, the Acer Aspire Switch 10 E ($279, £185, AU$358) might be in your wheelhouse.
Like the HP Pavilion x360 ($409, £273, AU$530), the Aspire Switch 10 E combines affordability and style, but little else. This puts it in line with a solid group of mid-range convertibles that are ideal for students and consumers with basic performance needs.
Design
The first thing you'll notice about the Switch 10 E is its gorgeous, matte plastic chassis that comes in six different colors (blue, purple, white, black, pink and magenta). The matting feels nice to the touch, and Acer says it is meant to prevent scratches and smudges. Coupled with a midnight black piping, five of the six colors (except for black) will appeal to anyone who is exhausted by the trite silver and black laptops every other manufacturer produces.
The traditional keyboard feels great beneath your palms. Its aluminum casing won't smudge under your sweaty palms and fingers. Plus, the tiny precision touchpad is perfectly situated between where your thumbs would naturally sit in a ready-to-type position.
Acer's second generation Snap Hinge 2 allows the tablet to sit firmly atop the keyboard. We enjoyed last year's hinge, and we love this one even more. It's as easy as popping on or off the device and then pushing and pulling as much as you'd like. I didn't experience any wobbles or wiggles, and I had no trouble putting it on or taking it off.
What you'll see on the Switch's touchscreen won't be very pretty, though: the Switch comes packing a barely-HD, 1,280 x 800 display that produces awful glare. Seriously, with my back to the sun, I could barely make out the Windows 8.1 home screen. Acer says the device comes with something called Acer LumiFlex, which is supposed to optimize the display under sunlight, but when I asked an Acer rep to solve the issue for me, nothing changed.
But don't worry, you won't be moving around with this screen as much as, say, a tablet. Because the device is heavy, both as a laptop (2.82 pounds, 1.28kg) and as a tablet (1.39 pounds, 630 grams), it absolutely works best as sit-down device.
For comparisons sake, the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro weighs only 2.62 pounds in total, and the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 weighs only 1.76 pounds before you latch on the 0.65-pound keyboard. The Switch is much lighter than its more realistic competitor, the Pavilion x360, which weighs a whopping 3.21 pounds (1.45 kg) as a laptop. But both these devices are chunkers.
Performance
Acer says it managed to cram 12 hours of battery life into the Switch, which would be a revolution in hybrid laptops if true. The competitors I mentioned earlier don't crack the eight-hour mark. To be fair, we fully tested those devices, so let's see what happens when we get the Switch into our laboratory.
Conversely, I can say for sure that you will hate that this device uses an Intel Atom processor. It took several seconds for the unit to recognize my clicks and then several more seconds before the program I clicked actually loaded. This is a huge deal that will challenge every aspect of your computing experience.
If you only want this computer for local word processing documents, then you might be OK. But, if you want to bang around from web-based applications to local programs to web browsing, take my advice, look elsewhere.
Beneath the hood, you'll get a pedestrian 1GB of DDR3 memory and 2GB of DDR3L memory, in addition to up to 64GB of storage. Storage space starts at 32GB. It is immediately unclear how much of the memory and storage live in the tablet versus the keyboard, but I've put in a call to Acer.
It's not all bad
In addition to its gorgeous looks, the Switch also has a cool feature that protects you from losing your entire hard drive whenever you detach your keyboard. For example, lets say you're in a cafe and you pop your keyboard off so that you can use the Switch as a tablet, but then you forget your keyboard; you've just lost your entire hard drive to anyone who has a compatible device. However, Acer is able to pair your keyboard to your tablet so that the two can only work in concert.
Early verdict
Don't allow the Acer Aspire Switch 10 E's low price tag to convince you to buy this machine. It looks good, it feels good, and it even appears to be well-constructed. Unfortunately, it will underperform and you'll wish you'd spent a few extra bucks on something with more power and speed.
However, if you do decide to make this purchase, you'll be best served displaying the unit at the front of your desk. Your friends will be jealous of its sex appeal.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1GnrjLS
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