The Clover Trail (Atom Z2760) Review: Acer's W510 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 20, 2012 10:34 AM ESTWiFi
Connected over the Atom Z2760’s SDIO interface is Broadcom’s 4330 WiFi solution. The 4330 is a single-stream, dual-band (2.4/5GHz) 802.11n device. Wireless performance is reasonable - I was able to pull a maximum of 34Mbps down on a 5GHz network - but not great compared to the likes of the iPad 4 and Nexus 10.
Reception was comparable to most tablets of this size but I have been seeing a weird issue where Windows 8 claims there’s limited connectivity on a known network even if there aren’t any problems. Disconnecting and reconnecting always fixes it. I don’t know if this problem appeared more frequently after one of the latest Windows 8 updates, because I don’t remember having it much when I was testing Surface RT. Occasionally I’ve seen an issue where 5GHz networks won’t appear to the W510 without toggling airport mode. I’ve been chalking these issues up to early Windows 8 problems, but again I don’t remember having them with Surface so it’s unclear how much of this is specific to the W510.
Camera
The W510 features a rear facing 8MP camera (3264 x 2448, 1.4 - 2.5MB compressed JPEG size) and a front facing 2.1MP camera (1920 x 1080, ~600KB compressed JPEG size). Neither is particularly amazing at shooting photos, but like with most tablets the rear facing camera can produce passable results for web use:
Rear facing camera
Rear facing camera
Front facing camera
The camera UI and preview frame rate are both solid for stills, but there is a strange behavior where you’ll get a split second of live view after you’ve taken a shot using the rear camera before you’re shown a preview of the shot you just took.
Video is recorded in Main Profile (4.0) AVC at around 15Mbps with 2-channel stereo audio:
Maintaining 30 fps while shooting 1080p video isn't possible it seems. Video quality is average at best for a tablet using the rear facing camera:
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popej - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
Could we get some comments how does it work as a tablet?Does Metro menu work efficient? Is on-screen keyboard usable? Has it sensors like accelerator, compass, GPS? Does it switch to portrait mode automatically? Any peculiarity with Metro in portrait mode? Is it usable outdoor? Is SD memory usable?
Thanks for review and benchmarks but I feel like I got more questions than answers ;)
mrdude - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141317-samsungs-...Supposedly the WiFi problems aren't restricted to the Acer W510 and Intel admitted there's an issue with the Samsung PC 500T.
Are these the same problems you're encountering? It sounds like some users have had similar issues as well.
That brand new Clover Trail SoC already looks dated :D Matches up nicely with the Tegra 3, but if I can buy a Google Nexus 7 for less than half the price of this Acer, and get better performance at that, it really shows just how out of touch both Intel and MS are in the mobile space where tablets are concerned.
bollux78 - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
Really, even if the performance is not very good, you can run anything, ANYTHING!Forget the tablets, I would not trade a x86 tablet in the present for an Ipad 15 coming from the future in a time traveler's bag with 30x more horsepower, unless you could run some virtual machine able to emulated a complete x86 machine. There is simply nothing to complain about this device.
kyuu - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
You do have a point, in that sure, the iPadWhatever has an impressive SoC, particularly the GPU. But... so what? What can you do with it? Play some "meh" mobile games?Still, I'd like to see an x86 Win8 tablet with something better than a rehashed Atom attached to a dismal GPU.
kyuu - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
I should add, I'd like to see that in a truly mobile tablet, not a big, battery-chugging monolith as the Surface Pro is likely to be (much as it may be appealing otherwise).dwade123 - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
Move aside ARM, Intel is coming through.DaveSimmons - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
Just like the steamroller in Austin Powers: very . . . . verrrry . . . . slowwwwllllyyyyDonkey2008 - Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - link
LOL. Absolutely perfect analogy.lopri - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
If the 64 GB version leaves you with 30 GB.. then how much space is left usable for the 32 GB version??kyuu - Thursday, December 20, 2012 - link
Negative 2 GB? o_0