Last weekend I visited Dublin with a small group of technology journalists from across the UK. in the #AcerLiveBlog 2015. Our mission: use the latest Acer gadgets to accomplish a series of challenges across the fine city. We were given a phone, the Liquid Jade Z; a tablet, the Iconia One 8; and a convertible laptop, the Switch 10 E. Here’s a quick hands-on review of each!
Acer Liquid Jade Z phone
So – the Liquid Jade Z. The Z is a mid-range Android phone, with a very slim body and a reasonable set of specifications. It uses a less-common MediaTek processor, but still is fast enough when navigating around Android 4.4 KitKat. An upgrade to Android 5.0 is promised too. The screen is five inches, and combined with the slim body it really does feel tiny compared to the iPhone 6 Plus that I’m used to. I once put it in my pocket, and later thought I had lost it because I couldn’t feel it in there.
Besides its slim signature, the best part of the Jade Z was its camera. Shots taken outside were vibrant without being over-saturated, with the 13-megapixel sensor providing adequate detail without any processing difficulties. Low light images fared worse, with a lot of smeary processing, but were still usable.
Video was another highlight; our first challenge was to film our attempts to play hurling, one of three Gaelic Games that we’d be trying at a local sports club. The video was sharp and had reasonable sound recording too, making it perfectly adequate for the job at hand. One video, taken later, was inextricably played back at a 90 degree angle in Windows, but this was soon solved with five minutes of work in Movie Maker and the problem didn’t recur.
Acer Iconia One 8 tablet
Our next device-specific challenge was to use our Iconia One 8 tablets to draw the River Liffy. You see, the tablet has a Precision Touch technology that allows you to use really thin styluses… in fact, you can just use a pencil. We proceeded to the nearest section of the river, and the talented Katharine Byrne demonstrated what was possible if you actually know how to draw, making very fine marks with the pencil compared to what would be possible with a normal capacitive stylus or a finger.
Otherwise, the Iconia One 8 was capable if a bit boring. The textured plastic back makes it easy to hold on to, and it’s even available in some interesting colours (although my unit was a simple white). The specifications here aren’t wonderful – and the 1280 x 800 screen could certainly do with improvement – but in large, things worked as expected. Thankfully Acer have restrained themselves from loading up the tablet with junk apps, and consequently things run quite smoothly. The tablet actually comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop, which is nice to see (relatively) soon after Lollipop’s release.
Acer Switch 10 E convertible
After the challenges were done and dusted and the final dinner eaten, it was time to retire to the hotel and write up the events of the weekend. For this I used the last device we were given, the Acer Switch 10 E convertible. This device is essentially a laptop, but it’s made of two pieces that are joined by a magnetic hinge.
Thanks to that hinge, the Switch 10 E has four modes, technically: normal laptop mode, tablet mode (pull off the keyboard section), display mode (put the display back on, but backwards) and tent mode (and then invert the device to form a tent). The display mode didn’t seem that useful, but the tent mode was useful for watching videos or checking the time when you have very little space – think a tray table on an aeroplane or train, or a small nightstand.
Besides its transformational capabilities, I wasn’t too impressed with the 10 E – the chassis was colourful, but none too stylish and fairly thick. The Intel Atom processor was a big step up from low-end mobile processors, but nowhere near as good at multi-tasking or difficult computations as a proper laptop or desktop processor. The screen was also quite low resolution, although at least being an IPS display it did have reasonable viewing angles and colour accuracy.
Overall then, I’d say it’s worth considering if you can find it at a discount, but there are more powerful or more stylish convertible options at a similar price point.
Conclusion
I hope these hands-on impressions were useful! Be sure to ask any questions you like in the comments below, or write to us on Twitter @mobilefun.