Review : Acer ICONIA Dual screen Laptop

Make way for the touchbook - Acer's new dual touchscreen laptop. The device has two touchscreens and no physical keyboard whatsoever. In fact, apart from the power button and the display keyboard button, there are no physical buttons on the device. Put simply, the device looks like two 14-inch tablets glued together on a hinge.

So is the Acer ICONIA dual screen laptop just another trophy for your 'show off' wall or does it pack in some utility as well?

Packaging and Contents

A standard briefcase style box contains the device along with the manuals, CD, charger, a power filter adaptor and an external card reader.

First Impression

The device is quite heavy, weighing in at over 2.5 kgs. Open the lid and instead of seeing the usual keyboard, you will find two 14-inch HD touchscreens screens. The device is quite thick and you'd expect such a thick device to house a CD drive at the least but it doesn't. It doesn't even house a card reader, which is an extra accessory available with the device. An upside - the device houses one USB3.0 port.

Multimedia

Are two 14-inch screens better than one? Well, yes and no.

Both the displays have a resolution of 1366x768. The upper display is a standard touchscreen where as the lower display has gorilla glass making it scratch resistant.

The touch response on the upper display is pretty bad. The close, maximize and minimize icons along with the scrolling bar have been increased in size to make the touch inputs more responsive but it's the little things such as trying to control the volume/navigation on VLC, clicking on File, Menu, etc. that becomes quite problematic. The overall experience of touching the monitor to launch, close or perform any action feels quite inconvenient and after some time this reviewer's arm started hurting with the effort of keeping it up to use the touchscreen.

The bottom touchscreen, however,is an entirely different story. Its response is fabulous,much better than expected. A nifty feature - put all 10 fingers on the display to launch the keyboard, put 5 fingers on the display to launch the Acer ring.

Typing on the keyboard takes some getting used to. The keys are well spaced out and you do get an audio feedback for every key you press a key but the experience isn't the same as a regular keyboard. In fact, the experience feels rather odd. Especially since we are used to a physical keyboard.

The trackpad on the device is very disappointing. There is no way to distinguish whether your finger is on the trackpad or not. So many times while navigating, this reviewer's finger subconsciously left the track pad with resulting confusion about why the mouse wasn't moving. The trackpad could have been bigger and had a different feel to distinguish it from the rest of the surface.

You also have the option to put custom skins on the keyboard display, which is nice.


One Ring to rule them all:

As mentioned earlier, upon touching thesecondary display with 5 fingers, the Acer ring launches.  Conceptually, the Acer ring is a good idea. Practically, it's a bit buggy, which is to say that the applications crashed sometimes.

Gesture Editor is a cool feature. You can customize and assign specific gestures to launch certain programs or applications. For instance, one swipe of the finger and your browser pops up, or draw the symbol "D" to show the desktop.

You also have certain essential optionssuch as screen brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, screen saver, hibernate, sleep, shut down, etc. on one click of the Acer ring. Although this feature isn't a game changer, the availability of the option is nice.

The ring feature also offers one touch access to your music, movies photos and web browsing. Here, the Social Jogger app deserves special mention. This app integrates your social networking and YouTube streams under one roof. The visual representation looks a lot like tweet deck.

Another way in which you can use the dual screen is by expanding the web browser on both the screens. This will reduce the amount of scrolling you do on a particular page but the experience of reading the information feels disjointed. Plus, it's very inconvenient trying to read text on an inclined screen and then text on a flat surface.

In terms of audio, the speakers on the device are average performance-wise. The midrange and vocal output is good but the speakers lack bass. Movie playback on the device was good. We ran Iron Man 2 in 1080p .mkv format and the movie played without any hiccups. The only way to take advantage of the 2 touchscreens while watching a movie is use the second screen for the controls through the videos app in the Acer ring.

Performance

Performance as a notebook is where the Acer ICONIA dual screen laptop truly disappoints. If you do not get used to the touch keyboard typing will be tedious. You would think that integration of touch on the monitor would add to convenience but there are times when it just frustrates you. Good luck trying to see the virtual keyboard if you are sitting out in the open with a lot of direct sunlight hitting the device.

The device is really heavy and scores low on portability factor.
In terms of connectivity, the device has the charging port, HDMI out and two USB 2.0 ports on the left. The right has the Ethernet port, VGA out, one USB 3.0 port (nice!!) and the headphones and microphone port. A display keyboard and power button is present at either side of the hinge. The device also boasts of a 1.3MP camera for video chatting and Bluetooth 3.0.

A disappointing factor is that the previous generation Intel core i5processors and not the Sandy Bridge powers the device. It also lacks a dedicated graphics card so don't expect great gaming results. On the 3D mark 06, the device had a score of 2728. The PC mark Vantage gave a score of 6150.

The battery life of the device is bad. The device possesses a 4-cell lithium ion battery that powers two LED displays. Pushing the device to itslimits, the battery barely lasted an hour. But use the device conservatively and you may be able to touch the three-hour mark.


Verdict:

The device has some interesting features such as the Acer ring app and USB 3.0. But the device needs some serious dedicated apps to justify the use of dual touchscreens. As a multimedia device,it is an unique and fun experience but falls short when you decide to use it as a notebook. If you want a new toy to show off then by all means this is for you, but if you if you want the biggest bang for your bucks -all 70,000 of them -look elsewhere, as the Acer ICONIA dual screen notebook is pretty much only good for novelty value.

Pros:
Cool Acer ring UI
USB 3.0 support
Great touch response on the lower display
Innovative design


Cons:
Uncomfortable typing experience
Small trackpad
Monitor touch experience is disappointing
Heavy
No CD Drive

Price: Rs. 69,990


RATINGS:
Performance: 3
Price: 2.5
Ease of setup: 5
Ergonomics: 3
Wow Factor: 3.5
Overall: 3

Specifications

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS
Intel core i5-480m 2.67 GHz processor
Dual 14-ich Acer CineCrystal Display with a resolution of 1366x768
Integrated Intel HD graphics
4GB DDR3 RAM
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 3.0
1.3MP webcam
4-cell li-ion battery

Benchmark scores:

PC mark Vantage scores:
PC Mark: 6150
Memories Score: 3420
TV and movies score: 4042
Gaming Score: 3421
Music Score: 6376
Communication Score: 5220
Productivity Score: 5620
HDD score: 3783
3D mark 06: 2728

Battery mark:

By test results: 48 min and 45 sec
Forecast Windows: 3 hours, 43 min and 54 sec