Acer Iconia W4-820-2466 review: All-day battery life from the 8-inch Acer W4

Acer's first attempt at an 8-inch Windows 8 tablet, the Iconia W3, worked well enough for an early example of the style, but it was soon eclipsed by newer models from Dell, Lenovo, and others with better design, features, and performance.

8.0

Acer Iconia W4-820-2466

The Good

Acer's Iconia W4 has excellent battery life for an 8-inch Windows tablet; plenty of ports for a slate, including HDMI, SD card, and USB, as well as a decently large 64GB SSD.

The Bad

The clunky plastic design does the W4 no favors, and it's thicker and heavier than many other Windows tablets. The screen resolution feels dated compared to a growing number of HD-or-better tablets.

The Bottom Line

The 8-inch Acer Iconia W4 has a few advantages that help it stand out from a crowd of similar devices, including great battery life and enough ports to support basic productivity. It's also much better -- and less expensive -- than last year's W3 model, so it earns bonus points for that.

The new Iconia W4 corrects a lot of what we didn't like about the original (but not everything), and the all-day battery life is enough to make it one of the better 8-inch Windows 8 tablets. With an Intel Atom CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD, it's fairly priced at $299 (Acer's list price is $349, but it's widely available for $50 less), especially as it includes ports for HDMI, USB, and SD cards (all of the micro-mini variety). The original W3 model cost more than $400, and prices for 8-inch Windows 8 tablets continue to trend down.

The real deciding factor here is the eight-hour-plus battery life, which is the best score among the current crop of similar systems we've tested. Add in the 64GB SSD, which is double what many other tablets offer, and it tells a compelling story, if you don't mind losing out in the looks department.

Design and features

Stack the current crop of 8-inch Windows tablets next to each other, and the Iconia W4 stands out, but not necessarily in a good way. Not only is it thicker than the Dell Venue 8 or the ThinkPad 8 , it's the only one with a raised screen panel on the front of the device. Instead of smooth edge-to-edge glass across the entire front face, you get a plastic outer border, with the glass screen cover slightly inset and extruded. The combined effect makes the screen look even smaller than it is compared to the overall footprint of the system.

The W4 is also on the heavy side, weighing 0.92-pound without its power cable. Eight-inch Windows 8 tablets from Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and others weigh less, and in fact, the only 8-inch Windows tablet we could find that weighed more was last year's 1.1-pound Iconia W3.

In contrast, the Lenovo 8 has its power button and USB/power connection on the right edge and the HDMI on the left edge, with nothing on the top and only a headphone jack on the bottom. Dell and Asus tablets have their own unique layouts. I'm not sure one version has a huge advantage over another at this point, and the main advantage or disadvantage you may find is the charging port being close to where your power cable is plugged into the wall.

The 8-inch display has the same 1,280x800 resolution as the previous Iconia tablet, which is also the same as the Dell Venue 8 and Asus Note 8. Lenovo's ThinkPad 8 costs a bit more but has an excellent 1,920x1,200 display. The Acer version is bright and clear, and at 8 inches you can certainly argue that more resolution is not necessary, but everything from popular 5-inch phones to the retina iPad Mini all have higher screen resolutions. The off-axis viewing angles on the W4 are a great improvement over last year's W3 model, which we knocked for its poor screen quality.

Connections, performance, and battery

While the design, weight, and screen resolution of the Iconia W4 do it no favors, it does beat most of the other 8-inch Windows 8 tablets for offering a full selection of ports. Full for a slate-style tablet, at least. Having USB, HDMI, and an SD card slot makes this as functional as a budget laptop, but keep in mind you'll need a pocketful of adapters or cables.

Another plus is its 64GB SSD. That's bigger than the 32GB of storage in our Asus VivoTab Note 8 or Dell Venue Pro 8 (although Dell is currently offering a 64GB model for the same $299). The 10-inch Lenovo Miix 2 has a laptop-size 128GB SSD but also costs $599.

In our CNET Labs benchmark tests, the Iconia W4 performed right in the middle of the pack, compared other recent Windows 8 tablets. In real-world terms, the performance differences were minor, and you're unlikely to notice much practical difference. Gaming is possible, as long as you stick to the simple games offered by the Windows 8 app store, which are designed for low-power tablets and laptops. However, on such a small, low-res screen, Halo Spartan Assault and ports of Gameloft games originally on iOS and Android all work well.

Acer Iconia W4-820-2466 (pictures)

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Conclusion

The Acer Iconia W4 is, first, a big improvement over the mediocre original W3 from 2013. Compared to other current Windows 8 tablets, it's thick, heavy, and a bit ugly, but if you can work with that, for a reasonably $299 it has a big 64GB SSD, all the requisite ports and connections, and most importantly, the best battery life in its category.

System configurations

Acer Iconia W4

Windows 8.1 (32-bit); 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 64GB SSD hard drive

Asus VivoTab Note 8

Windows 8.1 (32-bit); 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 32GB SSD hard drive

Lenovo IdeaTab Miix 2

Windows 8.1 (32-bit); 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z3740; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 128GB SSD hard drive

Dell Venue 8 Pro

Windows 8.1 (32-bit); 1.3GHz Intel Atom 3740D; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 800MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 32GB Sasmung SSD

Lenovo ThinkPad 8 Pro

Windows 8.1 Pro (32-bit); 1.46GHz Intel Atom Z3770; 2GB DDR3 SDRAM 800MHz; 32MB (dedicated) Intel HD Graphics; 64GB Sasmung SSD