Acer Iconia W700 Windws 8 Tablet Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,567 words · ~12 min read
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this video is brought to you by coolermaster mobile featuring The Jazz
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Pro notebook stand check it out at mobile. coolermaster usa.com welcome to
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my unboxing and first look at the Acer Iconia w700 tablet now unlike most of
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the tablets we've seen in the last few years actually this is not an ARM-based
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design or an iPad or anything that requires a special operating system to
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run this is an Intel based so so that is an x86 based tablet that comes in at a
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pretty high price point although when you compare it to something like you
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know a 64 gig iPad honestly it's not that unreasonable it's a little under a
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th000 bucks but has the ability to run a full-blown Windows 8 operating system
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with all of the fixings and it looks like this is an eval unit so the S the
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uh seals are already broken but why don't we do a quick run through of the specs before we get started so Windows 8
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64bit Intel Core i5 3317 U so it's a 1.6
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G or 1.7 GHz rather CPU turbo up to 2.6
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GHz it's an 11.6 in multi-touch full HD
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display it comes with 4 gigs of memory 128 gig SSD which I think is pretty cool
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it also has a da it's in my notes
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somewhere whatever I can't find it something milliamp hour battery that's
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basically good for 6 hours of Fairly heavy use or as much as 9 hours of
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Fairly light use sort of not counting any standby time so there's a variety of
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different configurations it's available with different amounts of uh or
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different sizes of drive and it's available with different accessories and all that kind of stuff but the config
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that we have comes with a keyboard dock so this is what makes it so Acer feels
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they are Bridging the Gap between tablet and notebook because the power is
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somewhere in between a tablet and a notebook with a core i7 but not a
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particular or rather a core i5 but not a particularly fast one and the form
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factor is somewhere between a tablet and a notebook much like a Microsoft Surface
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Pro just because it is a little bit on the thicker side so it comes with a fux
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leather carrying case that uh there we go I can go away take that off that has
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okay a place to put the tablet inside it here that's got kind of a plastic backing to protect it and then has this
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is actually quite nice has a keyboard a full keyboard that you can then prop the
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tablet up in so just like that so let's go ahead and pull the tablet out and see
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how she looks so it's a little bit on the thicker side compared to again you
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know your iPad or your uh your ASUS transformer or any kind of ARM based
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design but that's because it has to accommodate the cooling needed for an
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Intel basically what amounts to an Ultrabook processor so it's hard to get
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the form factor much Slimmer than what they've done here so you can see there's
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two vents down here on the bottom as well as an orientation lock oh okay is
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that an orientation lock button or is that a power button guess we'll find out
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in a moment here on the side here we've got oh no that's power volume rocker as
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well as a headphone microphone Jack on
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the bottom you've got two speakers so stereo speakers on the bottom the tablet
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is meant to be used in portrait or rather in landscape mode and then on the
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other side we find DC power in USB 3 which is one of the really nice things
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about these Windows 8 tablets or well really any tablet that has USB 3 is nice
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to have USB 3 on um and finally we've got micr HDMI out which actually allows
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you to use it as a notebook computer if you just kind of plug PL it into a dock
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as well as a USB 3 Hub so and and then
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you can use micro HDMI to Output to any desktop monitor so in terms of included
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accessories we've got a power adapter which looks a little something
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like that there you go can have a look at that there's an iPhone size comparison for
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you then we've got the power cord that goes with that we've also got a USB
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charging cable so USB charging cable looks a little something like that it
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just uses standard um or rather no that's a data transfer cable so that's
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micro USB for data transfer here is our
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power cord all right next up we've got
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this is handy so they actually include a
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micro HDMI to VGA adapter so if you're going to use this for presentations or
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whatever else on the road they include that so you have not only digital output
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but also analog output from the tablet itself more accessories wow there's a
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lot of stuff in here I am really running out of space pretty quickly so we're
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going to ditch some of these things and
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yay we have more space so it comes with a cleaning cloth there you go little
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nice little white microfiber cleaning cloth a bunch of DVDs although I don't
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know where they're expecting you to put those it does not have an optical Bay in
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case you guys are wondering International Travelers warranty is a nice thing to have because if you move
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or whatever else there are devices where your warranty does not come with you
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which I've always thought is bizarre and I'm glad to see that Trend really
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turning around all right more components here now if
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there's any complaints that I've seen about this particular tablet it's that
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compared to the build quality of the tablet itself the dock is a little bit
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um a little bit less than less than
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equally satisfactory compared to that I mean I've had people come out as far as
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to say the build quality of the dock is very uh disappointing compared to the
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tablet so this is this is plastic this
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piece slides into presumably here
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and allows you to dock the tablet like this so you could actually use the unit
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as a secondary monitor here actually I can lift this up you could use the unit
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as a secondary monitor I have no idea what you're talking about you have it
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upside down all right so we figured out the
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dock stand so yeah it's a little bit uh
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not quite up to the same standard of build quality as the tablet itself
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although this is as much a compliment for the tablet as it is sort of a knock
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against the uh the stand here so it can be configured in portrait like like this
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just like that or it can be configured in landscape mode like this there you go
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okay well I didn't get it in that time so there it should go in like that and
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then it can sit in landscape mode like that there you go that's how it looks
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like from the back yeah like it's really not the best thing in the world ever but
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the tablet itself is absolutely gorgeous so we're just going to show how it fits
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in here just just once and so you kind of put in like that there's little
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rubber pieces here soft plastic pieces that keep it from getting scratched as
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you plug it in and this actually gives you a little bit more in terms of IO so
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there's your vents on the top so you're still going to get all the cooling you need and it's uh expands that single USB
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3 to three usb3 ports so you can actually plug in all the peripherals you
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need and all that it also adds a pass through for the power in and last but
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not least you still have access to your micro HDMI so you're still going to be
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able to use it as like a dual monitor setup or you could even just tuck it
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away in the corner and just use a full desktop keyboard and mouse and all that
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good stuff which is uh which is a really nice thing the only thing that I would
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have liked to see added would be wired Lan as like like with a an adapter
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chipset usb3 to wired l in here that way you really have more like a desktop
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experience so let's go ahead and pull it out of that and put it into the travel
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case that also comes with this particular setup so there we
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go it's not quite the same uh level of
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Elegance as something like Microsoft's touch uh keyboard or type keyboard but
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what it does do is it does actually protect the unit in a meaningful way so
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around the edges you've got um a soft a soft rubber that comes around all of the
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aluminum edges and actually fits quite snugly which makes sense because it's
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designed just for this device this device only and uh that was the worst
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German accent anyone's ever heard ever but you know whatever you guys don't
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watch this show for my German accent I'm sure so there you go so you can see what
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that looks like uh it folds down on top
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so this is Gorilla Glass too so I wouldn't worry too much about damaging
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it one way or the other but it folds down onto I'm just going to turn the
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screen back on there uh six little rubber pads that are on the keyboard
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itself so that it's not just going to mash itself up against this is plastic
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so I probably wouldn't be likely to scratch it anyway but it's not going to mash itself up against the keyboard and
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leave those imprints on the screen that you've seen time and time again with
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various notebooks in terms of the thickness once you get it covered in the
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faux leather casing as well as the uh the plastic housing you've got a size
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here that looks sort of what are what are we at we're at about triple the
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thickness of something like an iPhone and honestly compared to something like
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an S7 which you guys have probably seen if you've been watching my live streams
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because I usually put it in front of me these days so an S7 is actually not that
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much bigger see like that so it's a 13 point
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something inch model 13.3 in but is actually quite a bit thinner so an
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Ultrabook if you don't need that tablet form factor
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sometimes may end up being a better solution for you because they do usually
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end up being a little bit more powerful um whereas that one's a little bit more
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expensive so I guess it's wide variety of trade-offs but anyway that's what it
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looks like in more like a notebook configuration the screen itself goes up
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to uh let me just have a look here there we go screen brightness yay nice and
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nice bright screen so it's very very vibrant it uses an IPS panel so the
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viewing angles are outstanding I mean this is something that we've kind of
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come to expect from tablets now but I'm
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really glad that that whole trend of sort of cheap tablets with cheap panels
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turned around can you see the viewing angle pretty well there or you can I I
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can't I was waving at myself you were waving at yourself oh okay okay well I
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wasn't watching him do that uh the keyboard itself has a bilingual layout
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because this is a Canadian model but not all of them will have that so that's
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going to vary depending on the territory that you're operating within and I'm
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just going to switch back to my word document where I had my notes for myself
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so I can see if there's anything else I need to tell you about this guy so let's
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make this more of a summary than anything else it's got a 720p front
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camera a 1080p rear camera Bluetooth Wi-Fi n all that stuff that you've come
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to expect it comes with a dock it comes with sort of the accessories that you
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really really need out of the box although I think probably the most exceptional thing about it is much like
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the S7 this is a new Acer in terms of build quality because I mean when I got
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my hands on the S7 I'd seen pictures and I knew that it was supposed to be really
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nice but I still wasn't quite expecting
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what ended up getting delivered to me so there's absolutely no flex in it it's
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absolutely gorgeous you can see there's only one Gap in the solid aluminum body
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here so I'm going to try and show that to the camera and that's up in this top
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strip right here which I'm assuming is something to do with antenna reception
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because we've seen a few tablets that have solid metal backings that have ended up with uh reception issues on
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their Wireless uh Wireless interfaces um
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you get a 1080p screen which is really really nice in a small form factor like
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this but one of the challenges is that when you're not using the whoopsy
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daisies when you're not using the modern UI you may find yourself um you may find
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yourself in a situation where it's not really that easy to read uh text or that
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easy to to use it unless you blow things up when you're in more like the uh the
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classic interface one thing that I should probably mention is if you do a
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five finger thing like this you get into Acer's little launcher here where you
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can store some favorite apps including their Cloud document storage Backup
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Manager uh also shows you like your device settings and all that cool stuff
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remember that's not the only way to access that stuff you can also swipe in
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from the side and I forgot this before but it was 350 knit brightness on the
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IPS screen so that's actually pretty outstanding and I think that pretty much
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covers it thank you for checking out this unboxing and first look at the Acer
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Iconia w700 don't forget to subscribe to L's Tech tips for more unboxings reviews
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and other computer videos