Tech Review Acer Aspire Switch 10 Tablet-Laptop Hybrids
Acer Aspire Switch 10 offers impressive versatility and portability with a lovely display at a wallet-friendly price point. This attractive Windows 8 convertible device offers several modes of use with a stunning display and plenty of power to surf the Web, check your email, and write a paper or two.
Unlike many detachable hybrids, which have a mechanical latch to separate tablet from keyboard, the Switch 10 utilizes powerful magnets to connect the two halves. In practice, the newly formed laptop remained connected despite receiving several hard shakes, but was still easy to take apart. The strong grip and flexible hinge allow the tablet to emulate several modes of use seen on the Lenovo Yoga series and other bendable hybrids. In addition to tablet and laptop modes, the Switch 10 offers a presentation mode: Just flip the tablet around. We also turned the device upside down, creating a makeshift tent mode.
Outfitted with a 1.33-GHz Intel Atom Z3745 processor with 2GB of RAM, the Acer Aspire Switch 10 can hold its own with tablets and laptops alike. We successfully streamed an episode of “Attack on Titan” through Netflix while running a full system scan with six open tabs in Firefox Mozilla, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
Laptop Battery Life
The Acer Aspire Switch 10 lasted 6 hours and 34 minutes on the Acer um08a71 lapotp battery test. That’s considerably less than the 8:03 ultraportable average. It was longer, however, than the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 11, which clocked in at 5:19. Both the Dell Venue 11 Pro and ASUS Transformer Book T100 ran an older version of the test, posting 8 hours and 12:28 respectively.
Acer loaded the Switch 10 with a small, but useful multimedia suite. Acer Photo and Media plays multimedia stored on the ultraportable and syncs it with other devices via Acer Cloud. The Acer Video Player handles any video saved on the device.
There are a few productivity apps, such as Acer Docs; this program allows users to edit documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, and access them on other devices using the cloud.
Acer Aspire Switch 10 is the latest hybrid device to successfully blur the line between laptops and tablets. For $429, you get a device that can switch from laptop to tablet to presentation device with a flip of the display.
Overall, we prefer the $399 ASUS Transformer Book T100, which offers longer Asus a32-f80 battery life, and the $499 Dell Venue 11 Pro, which has a larger, 1080p screen. The Switch 10 is not the most powerful device on the block, but light-productivity and multimedia users will find this hybrid versatile and portable.
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