If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on a small Windows 8 tablet or convertible, there are two new options on the market this week. The first 8 inch Windows 8 tablet is now in stock at some stores, and Lenovo’s 11.6 inch Windows 8 convertible laptop is now available from the Lenovo website.
The Acer Iconia W3 is now available for $350, while the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11S sells for $750 and up.
Lenovo IdeaPada Yoga 11s
Lenovo’s third member of the Yoga family is a laptop that bends over backward to become a tablet. Basically you can lift the lid and use the computer in notebook mode — or keep pushing the screen until it goes back nearly 360 degrees and rests below the keyboard so you can hold the system like a tablet.
The first Yoga tablet had a 13.3 inch screen, the second had an 11.6 inch display but ran Windows RT. This is the company’s smallest full Windows 8 model.
It sports an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, an Intel Ivy Bridge processor and is available with 4GB to 8GB of memory and 128GB or 256GB solid state disk options.
Acer Iconia W3
The Acer Iconia W3 is the smallest Windows 8 tablet released to date. It has an 8.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display and it’s powered by an Intel Atom Z2760 Clover Trail processor.
Acer’s little tablet has 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, a 2MP front-facing camera, and offers up to 8 hours of battery life.
Unfortunately when I got a chance to play with the Iconia W3 recently, I was underwhelmed by its speed and the screen’s viewing angles.
Interestingly, Staples sent out a press release to let us know that the Iconia W3 was now available in-stores, but I don’t see any mention of it on the company’s website at the moment. Office Depot, however, is selling the Iconia W3 for $350, which is about $30 less than the tablet’s list price.
Update: The Iconia W3 is now available from Staples for $350 as well.
Acer also offers an optional Bluetooth keyboard for $80.
Here is its review.
I wonder why the Acer W3 is slower than other Z2760 devices. Seemed like the W3 would have been a nice ultra-mobile Windows device.
There’s also a chance it was a buggy demo unit or that the firmware wasn’t final — but there’s no fixing the poor viewing angles on the TN display.