About a month ago we saw some leaked images and specs for one of the first new wave of Windows 8 powered devices to use a screen of less than 10-inches. Acer forced the site of the original leak to take down its pictures and specifications but not before many other sites snaffled them and published them willy-nilly.
Now Acer has officially revealed the Iconia W3 in a rather low key way; via an English language page upon its Finnish site. The official pictures and details on this site are basically the same as what we saw via the Minimachines.net leak. However there are some interesting additional details and differences.
Firstly the screen is now confirmed to be an 8.1-inch WXGA (1280×768) Multi-Touch LCD. The leak details suggested a resolution of 1280x800. That means until Windows 8.1 is released the Acer W3 won’t be able to use the snapping functionality of the Modern UI to multi-task. The previously leaked info did get the processor and RAM specification right.
Microsoft Office included
In a move which might be important for the future adoption of Microsoft tablets, the Finnish Acer W3 feature list suggests that a full version of Microsoft Office is included with this tablet, which is a departure in strategy for a non-RT device. If this happened industry-wide in the next generation of Windows tablets it would be quite impactful.
Specifications are as follows:
- Windows 8 Pro + Microsoft Office
- Intel® Atom™ Z2760
- 8.1-inch WXGA (1280×768) Multi-Touch LCD
- 2GB Memory
- eMMC 64GB storage + microSD card slot built in
- Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 3650
- 802.11 b/g/n & BlueTooth 4.0
- Micro HDMI
- Micro-USB 2.0 port
- Up to 8 hours 720p video playback on a single charge
- Silver
- 1 year warranty
This Acer Iconia W3 is expected to be launched and made widely available during June, probably during Computex. There will be full sized keyboard dock accessory made available, as pictured. Pricing is expected to be around the $399 mark but let’s hope it will be less than that.
