Acer is gearing up to introduce the Iconia W500 tablet, the world’s first slate based on AMD’s Fusion platform.
Unlike most tablets, the W500 is based on AMD’s C-50 APU. This is a proper x86 dual-core with on-die HD 6250 graphics. Thanks to this, the W500 runs Windows 7 rather than Android, which should come in handy for a wide variety of users who rely on the Windows environment and cannot transition to Android for practical reasons.
The W500 packs a 10.1-inch 1280x800 touchscreen, but crucially it also ships with a full-sized chiclet keyboard, which doubles as a stand and practically transforms it into an ultraportable notebook. Coupled with Windows compatibility, this clever feature makes it a pretty useful little toy for people on the go.
However, there are quite a few downsides as well. The Iconia is a bit chunkier than ARM-based tablets and, as you have probably guessed, battery life isn’t great either. Acer claims it can deliver four to six hours, which is much lower than the ARM competition. It also costs a bit more, €499 to be precise.
Despite some shortcomings, it is a very interesting concept, particularly for business users who can’t live without Windows or a proper keyboard.
You can check out the preview over at Pocket Lint.
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x86 all the way
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