Acer Announces Predator 8 Gaming Tablet With Intel Atom x7 And Android 5.1
by Brett Howse on September 3, 2015 11:10 PM EST
Acer has introduced a dedicated gaming tablet called the Predator 8. This is a new play from Acer and has some pretty interesting hardware packed in. All of it is squeezed into an 8.7 mm thin package which weighs in a just 350 grams.
We’ve seen quite a few Android devices being powered by Atom lately, but most have still been on the 22 nm Silvermont cores. There have been a couple of 14 nm Airmont devices announced, and Acer has gone right to the top of the stack with the Intel Atom x7 processor. We’ve taken a look at the new Cherry Trail platform on the Surface 3 Review, and found it to be quite potent especially when you look at the physical chip size. But where it is potent is actually in CPU performance, which has traditionally been Intel’s strength. GPU performance, at least on the Surface 3, was not class leading. It would be great to see this in an Android device though so we can compare it apples to apples with the other top end gaming tablets like the NVIDIA Shield.
| Acer Predator 8 | |||||
| Predator 8 Tablet | |||||
| SoC | Intel Atom x7 | ||||
| RAM | 2 GB | ||||
| Storage | Up to 64 GB eMMC | ||||
| Display | 8" 1920x1200 IPS LCD with enhanced touch | ||||
| Speakers | 4 Front Facing with Virtual Surround Sound | ||||
| OS | Android 5.1 | ||||
| Price | $299.99 | ||||
| Availability | 06-Nov | ||||
The Android 5.1 tablet features a 16:10 display with a 1920x1200 resolution. This is a zero air gap IPS panel which should reduce reflections and refractions within the display stack, and Acer claims it covers 100% of the NTSC color space, which is actually really close to Adobe RGB. This is a wider gamut than most displays can handle but it is actually a problem on Android since it has no color management. Having a gamut that is larger than sRGB means that colors will be oversaturated.
It also has four front-facing speakers and virtual surround sound, which might be kind of interesting on a gaming tablet. You can get the tablet with up to 64 GB of storage, and it also features microSD support for an additional 128 GB of space.
One interesting addition is what Acer is calling Highly Precise Touchscreen. The tablet features smaller touch sensors which are packaged with a higher density on the display which Acer says leads to greater control and accuracy which they say is useful for gaming. It also supports any device with a 2mm fine tip such as a graphite pencil or the optional Acer Accurate Stylus.
Acer has partnered with Newegg on distribution, and Newegg will have an exclusive two week period to offer this tablet starting on November 6. It will retail for $300.
Source: Acer
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Wolfpup - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
No it's not. Windows gives you real file management, good built in media players, and good third party players. Even stuff like VLC that's awesome on Windows is terrible on Android. Oh, and Windows has support for SD cards too without hacks. There's no universe where Android makes more sense for media, much less games. Android's time has come and gone on tablets, so it's bizarre to see a company advertise a "gaming" tablet and then see it's running Android LOL.I'm super disappointed we couldn't get Nvidia's Denver cores running x86 Windows though, as I'm sure they originally planned. I'm not sure how the CPU performance was (although it beat all ARM stuff save for Apple), but the GPU performance would be better than 3rd gen Atom, I think...second gen with its 4 cores for sure.
WhisperingEye - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
What are you talking about? I have a Surface 3 with Win10. It has a 64gb SSD and 2gb RAM. Same Processor, well an Atom I7 anyway. Runs fast and I would say flawlessly. This tablet is running identical specs down to the screen resolution of a Surface 3. Only difference, and the reason it wouldn't work at all: the 8 inch screen size. You couldn't do anything at that resolution and size.Wolfpup - Tuesday, September 8, 2015 - link
Ditto, I read "gaming tablet", I look at the specs and am thinking "okay, so probably Intel's best Atom, that may be cool", and then I read "Android" and it's like whaaaaaaaat?What's hilarious about running Android on it too is Android runs slower than Windows, despite one being an awesome full PC OS and the other being a crippled thing for phones.
spikebike - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Given that intensive android games often have a native arm binaries to increase performance who in their right mind would buy an x86 to run android games? Also note that acer seems rather quiet about the GPU specifications. Why get this instead of last year's nvidia shield?anandreader106 - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
I can think of 100 reasons off the top of my head.WorldWithoutMadness - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
Would you kindly mention 25 of them?I'm pretty curious whether that number is not a figure of speech or not
ToTTenTranz - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
1 - Windows 102 - iPega 9023
3 - Steam In-Home Streaming
4 - 100: best 97 games on Steam playable with a gamepad
Valantar - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
You did see that this is an Android tablet, right?smorebuds - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link
failWhisperingEye - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
ToTTenTranz- What article did you just read?