The Acer Aspire P3 is a new product that already feels old.
Acer Aspire P3
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Windows tablets are here, and they'll be everywhere by the end of the year. Different prices, different performance levels, different values. The Acer Aspire P3 is bit of a holdover conceptually--it's really not much different under the hood than the Microsoft Surface Pro. Or, for that matter, the Acer Iconia W700, a Core i5 tablet we reviewed months ago. Where it differs: price. The P3 costs $799 (for a Core i3 version, or $899 for our configuration); the Surface Pro, $899 (but $129 extra for a keyboard cover). The older Iconia originally cost $999, but now is available for less.
Instead of the last Iconia W700's stand and separate keyboard, the Aspire P3 adopts a folio-style keyboard case as a pack-in.
The mediocre Bluetooth keyboard case would be a hard accessory to recommend on its own, but at least it's included in the purchase price. Microsoft's Surface Type Cover blows it away, but that accessory costs $129 on top of the already-high Surface Pro price. Laptops like the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T cost nearly the same, and at least have a proper keyboard-and-touch-pad base.
Many Atom-powered Windows 8 tablets tend to fall in the $500-$800 range; to see one with more powerful Core i5 processor is rare. You're also getting a fair set of specs: a slightly slower-than-normal Core i5 processor, 128GB SSD (more than many tablets), and 4GB of RAM.
But Intel is in the middle of revamping the processors you'll see in stores to fourth-gen Haswell ones, resulting in significant battery-life gains thus far. If I were buying a Windows 8 tablet, I'd wait for one of those processors to show up in what I was buying. As it stands, the Aspire P3 might do in a pinch, but it's a holdover product caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Call it the Surface Amateur.