Acer Iconia W4 review

Benchmarks:

Cinebench (OpenGL): 6.21

Cinebench (CPU): 1.16

PC Mark Home Battery Life: 8 hours 30 minutes

3DMark (Ice): 13905

3DMark (Cloud Gate): 1188

3DMark (Fire Strike): Would not run

The Acer Iconia W3 had good battery life, so we were confident that the Iconia W4's would last around the 10-hour mark. It didn't disappoint.

We managed to squeeze out more than nine hours from its 4,960mAH battery by putting it through a benchmark test that continually loops video playback and opens and closes apps until power is depleted.

Processing power is a mixed bag. Even with a fairly low 2GB of RAM, the tablet zips along nicely thanks to it housing a speedy SSD. Windows 8.1 apps run without a hitch, but it's a different story once demanding desktop programs come into the fold.

You won't run into too much trouble with one or two desktop applications open - you can run several Office apps simultaneously, for example - without experiencing any impact on performance.

Open four or five desktop apps, however, in addition to a few from the Microsoft Store, and you'll start to experience frozen windows, lag and, if you're low on storage space, lengthy lock-ups.

Simply put, the Iconia W4 won't meet the needs of power users needing to do anything more demanding than casual web browsing, word processing, social media or using Microsoft Store apps. However, as a day-to-day companion device for completing PC tasks on the go, it's perfectly up to the task.