Look and feel

It was a little over a year ago that Acer CEO J.T. Wang vowed the company would stop making "cheap and unprofitable products" and focus on more premium items -- namely, Ultrabooks. And yet, the W510 feels like precisely the sort of low-end netbook that earned Acer its reputation for slipshod quality in the first place. Mostly, it's the keyboard dock that's the problem: the plastic buttons have a slightly scratchy feel, and look mismatched against the smooth, faux-metal keyboard deck. The hinge, meanwhile, is made of white, textured plastic, which seems out of place next to the rest of the system. What's more, there's a large, unsightly gap between the hinge and the keyboard -- again, netbook redux.

Not to go there, but we suspect it's because of products like this that Microsoft's management felt compelled to build the Surface. Even if you left the Surface out of this, you can still do better than the W510. Just ask Samsung, or HP: if nothing else, their Windows 8 hybrids are at least more pleasant to look at.

The W510 feels like precisely the sort of netbook that earned Acer its reputation for slipshod quality in the first place.

Visceral reactions aside, we have some concerns about the build quality. We found that the screen tends to wobble in its hinge -- a potential inconvenience for folks who work on jostling buses, planes and Amtrak cars. Also, the weight balance is such that the machine can easily fall backward if it's placed in the keyboard dock, and you've got the whole thing resting in your lap. There's a solution here -- i.e., keeping the display fixed at an upright angle -- but it's not a very good one.

Still, having manhandled our tester machine a bit, we'd say it's safe to pick up the tablet by the screen with the keyboard attached; you don't have to worry about it falling out. On the plus side, too, the hinge feels sturdy. You can safely push the screen all the way back so that the keyboard is tucked behind the screen, with the keys face-down against your desk -- not that there's much advantage to using the tablet that way instead of in regular clamshell mode.

The tablet itself has the same gray plastic shell, with a white band ringing the edges. On its own, without the keyboard dock nearby, it's actually not a bad piece of kit: plain, yes, but unassuming. In fact, we like the two-tone effect of the white band against the black bezel. The only thing we could have done without is the "Acer" and "Iconia" branding, etched into the plastic on different sides of the devices. Other than that, the tablet feels unexpectedly light, at 1.27 pounds, and for that we have those plastics to thank. (Even with the keyboard, by the way, it weighs just 2.63 pounds) In practice, the 10.1-inch screen is just wide enough that you might have trouble typing in landscape orientation if your hands aren't that big, but using the onscreen keyboard in portrait mode is easy; even when you're holding the tablet upright, the weight feels balanced enough that you don't have to strain to prop it up.

Taking a tour around the device, you'll find the tablet portion is home to all the ports you'd expect to find on a mobile device. Up top, there's a headphone jack, power button and a switch for locking the screen orientation. On the bottom side are the various connectors that allow the tablet to slip into the keyboard dock, and the right landscape edge houses a volume rocker, microSD slot, micro-USB port and micro-HDMI output. The W510 has dual speakers, one on each side of the tablet when you're holding it in landscape mode. Unfortunately, though, they're located precisely where you're likely to grip the device, so it's easy to muffle the sound if you're watching a movie while holding the tablet in-hand. Finally, there's an 8-megapixel camera and LED flash around back, along with a 2-megapixel shooter up front.

The keyboard dock, meanwhile, is home to a full-size USB 2.0 port, along with a built-in 9-hour battery that promises to double the tablet's runtime. What you won't get is an SD card reader -- something ASUS typically offers on its Transformer Pad docks. There's also a charging slot, allowing you to use the same AC adapter you would with the tablet. That power connector is oddly large, but since there are no USB ports nearby, it's not like we have to worry about it obstructing any openings.

Additionally, Acer is offering some optional accessories alongside the W510. These include a micro-HDMI-to-VGA adapter, along with a pigeon-gray, faux-suede case. The sleeve has a super soft lining on the inside, and we appreciate how discreet the branding is; just a small metal logo that fades in with the suede, and nothing more.

Display and sound

Though we're not impressed by the W510's build quality, its Gorilla Glass display is actually quite nice. Yes, 1,366 x 768 resolution is middle-of-the-road as far as PCs go, but it's standard for Atom-powered hybrids like this. And in terms of quality, the IPS panel offers some decently wide viewing angles. Working with the dock on a flat surface, you should have some leeway as far as dipping the screen forward or backward (a boon for people who get work done on airplanes). You can even get by watching a movie from a side angle, but we're also aware that people aren't terribly likely to crowd around a machine this small anyway. We'd add, too, that the viewing angles improved as we increased the brightness. At 350 nits, it's quite bright, yet the battery life is robust enough that we never worried that cranking the brightness would have an adverse effect on runtime.

As on other tablets, the W510 doesn't deliver remarkably loud sound, and the audio quality is rather tinny with certain songs. Depending on your musical leanings, though, it's actually pleasant to listen to at the mid-range. Eric Clapton's "Layla" on acoustic guitar is enjoyable, for instance; synthesized songs like MGMT's "Kids," not so much.

Keyboard and touchpad

By now it's obvious we need to grade these Windows 8 keyboard docks on a curve: it's clear that creating a comfortable typing experience for a machine this small is no simple feat. In fact, we already knew that to be true: early netbooks offered terribly dense keyboards, and while PC makers like Toshiba eventually designed 10-inch laptops with more spacious layouts, we didn't really see progress until OEMs started putting out slightly larger 11-inch machines.

It doesn't help, then, that the W510 has a 10- not 11-inch screen: that extra bit of real estate seems to be the difference between a cramped setup and something more usable. As you've probably gathered by now, the W510 falls into that first category: in order to fit everything inside that 10.2-inch-wide keyboard deck, Acer had to shrink certain buttons like the Tab key and the four arrows. To Acer's credit, though, it at least used all the available space: the keys extend nearly to the edge of the chassis on either side. While typing, we also found that our fingers easily found the letter keys. If anything, we ran into more problems when our thumbs kept reaching past the space bar and hit the trackpad instead.

Speaking of the trackpad, it doesn't support gestures. That includes Windows 8-specific maneuvers, like swiping right to bring up the Charm Bar, but also two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. Basic stuff, don'tcha think?

Cameras

The W510's 8-megapixel rear shooter performs capably in daylight and with macro shots, though we routinely had to hold the tablet still for a couple seconds after tapping the shutter in the Windows 8 camera app. The shutter, by the way, isn't an onscreen button; you can tap anywhere onscreen to capture. Though there's no tap-to-focus feature, we found that, with still photos at least, the camera homed in on exactly the parts of photos we would have expected it to. With 1080p video, though, our clips sometimes slipped in and out of focus, as if the lens wasn't sure what the highlight of the shot was. Across the board, colors appear fairly muted, but you should notice a good deal of detail in your full-res, 8MP shots. Lower-lit shots will look a bit duller, of course, but even then, the noise level was tolerable.