I only have the Microsoft Surface pro 2 to compare it with as devices I use fairly regularly. This has a 10.6 inch screen and weighs in at 2 pounds. This is of course heavier and thicker than some of it competitors, although some of its hardware does bring some fairly solid positives.
Billy it really does depend on what you are going to be doing with your device. I do not think this is a direct comparison for your Samsung Galaxy tab 2.
With the Acer device you are buying you are putting it more in the range of the Surface Pro 2 and we could even look at this in comparison to a MacBook Pro 13inch. This is is going to be very similar hardware if we are going to look at it from a compute level.
Although both the Surface and the Acer weight around 2lb if you look at the MacBook Pro it weights in at 4.5lb your new device weighs in at a pretty good weight.
So I would say your new device is going to more looking at how we could imagine most laptop design to mould in the very near future across a heterogeneous range of hardware vendors. Changing from having a fixed factor laptop working style to more dynamic tablet feel with a touch screen and the ability to by user choice to clip on extra accessories for example a keyboard with touchpad; to on demand be able to change from working with mobility in focus to change in to a laptop work mode. This can be done by the use of docks to be able to multiscreen, keyboards, mice and so much more.
This is being seen to creep in to enterprise environments especially where you have mobile workers for example sales reps. They find that having this tablet/laptop approach to there hardware a great enable for business productivity. Let me give an example of this sticking with a sales rep with a very mobile working life analogy. They spend a lot of there time going to meetings and each meeting means new notes more information they need to jot this down, it is very annoying keeping pad after pad after pad of notes, also very annoying lugging round a heavy laptop everyday and a clunky way of jotting down notes in a meeting and almost gives a more impersonal feeling in certain scenarios. The mind-set change is the ability to walk in with there hardware giving them the ability have a tablet form, utilising business productivity applications such as one note and stylus they can write all there notes to a central repository. Also they can use neat features like write to text from OneNote and all there notes will be converted to text from there handwriting. Although getting back to point this makes the meeting much easier for them to take notes and with longer battery life and lighter form they are able to move from meeting to meeting all day long. They then get home and want to do something which needs a bit more compute power and possibly an extra screen we all feel powerful having emails on one screen and excel on the other
. Although they need to check through there notes as well… They do not want to be switching from their Acer device for example back to their chunky laptop and vice versa. They just want to walk in slap it in to a dock and get cracking. That is the way I see the mind set changing you take one device, which can take that hybrid position. Then the user can make it work the way they need it for the purpose on hand.
This I feel this is complemented greatly by Microsoft’s direction with a agnostic look at devices for the future where each different form factor will have the same UI to deliver across the board consistency for the end user.
Anyway I massively digressed somehow throughout this post if you analyse the your new Acer compared to a tablet such as the ipad air for weight yes you are going to being slightly disappointed it is going to chunky. Although if you look it as a form factor you interchange between a “large tablet”/ laptop you will be much more satisfied with the weight.
I hope you have an amazing birthday and love your new device I am jealous.
Cheers,
Harry