When Acer released the Iconia W3 not long ago, it was met positively. Not surprising, since the combination of a sub-10-inch form factor (the only one for Windows 8), long battery life, decent specs, and an affordable price tag (especially considering it comes with MS Office) truly makes it a winner.
In fact, most reviews only lament two things: the less-than-stellar screen, and the low internal memory space. With the release of Windows 8.1, it seems that Acer is set to release a successor (probably sooner than expected).
Bouweenpc.nl has just tried an unannounced Acer Iconia W4 at an Intel event and posted a hands-on video on their YouTube channel. It comes with a faster Bay Trail-based processor (the new 1.33GHz Atom Z3740) and now uses an IPS screen to answer the criticisms of W3. Everything else hasn’t changed, which is a crying shame since they could’ve upped the storage space. But, then again, that could’ve jacked up the price upward, defeating the purpose of what made it successful in the first place. However, it’ll be using Windows 8.1 (more about Windows 8.1 here).
The original Windows 8 was only acceptably usable on 64GB. On a 32GB, I doubt you’ll be able to do much (or install much, to be exact). Sure, there’s microSD and microUSB support, but the most you can do there is store data.
However, if they;’re able to still make the price affordable, then I’m sure there’s still a niche market that will find this useful. Just don’t get your hopes up on anything more than basic productivity. As this is unannounced, I’m banking on the thought that this might still be at a prototype stage, so we may yet see other hardware improvements.
[Source: Engadget]