Hands-on with the gamers' tablet
To fit in with the rest of Acer's Predator gaming range, the Predator 8 tablet has quite a lairy design. It's probably the most angular tablet we've ever seen and whether you like this look or not is really up to you.
There's aspects we like including the aluminium rear cover and the choice of a dark shade of red. However, the way the speakers stick out on all for corners make it a little difficult to hold – we don't think ergonomics was high on Acer's list for this one.
Acer has kept the dimensions down to a relatively thin 8.7mm and 350g so it's not like a gaming laptop where it's inevitably heavy and bulky. In fact, the Predator 8 is perfectly portable little tablet which will fit in a bag easily, although you won't really be able to get it into a pocket.
There will be various accessories available for the Predator 8 including including covers, carrying cases, a stylus, travel adapter with like Acer TravelMate 7730 AC Adapter, Acer TravelMate 8572 AC Adapter, Acer TravelMate TM5330 AC Adapter, Acer Aspire 5551 AC adapter, Acer Aspire 7740 AC Adapter, Acer Aspire One A150 AC Adapter, Acer Aspire One A110 AC Adapter, Acer Aspire One D150 AC Adapter, Acer Aspire 1810TZ AC Adapter, Acer Aspire 1680 AC Adapter, Acer Extensa 5630 AC Adapter, Acer TravelMate 290 AC Adapter, SlimPort adapter dongle and gaming headset.
As the name suggests, the Predator 8 uses an 8in screen which offers a Full HD (1920x1200) resolution. The display is good quality but at the same time it's hard to get what we could describe as excited about. It uses Zero Air Gap and IPS technology so viewing angles are good. Acer also touts its Predator ColourBlast tech from monitors on the tablet which supports 100 percent of NTSC colour gamut.
Instead of going with Qualcomm, Acer has stuck with Intel which is partners with for most of its devices being a Windows partner. The Predator 8 uses the new Intel Atom x7-z8700 processor with Intel HD Graphics and we found performance to be very smooth indeed but we'll reserve full judgement for later on when we get a final sample.
To accompany the x7 is 2GB of RAM and up to 64GB of internal storage. There's also a handy Micro-SD card slot for adding up to 128GB more and the Predator 8 also features 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi for, in theory, better speeds.
Apart from the slightly outrageous design, there are some hardware features especially for gaming including those four front facing speakers which we've already mentioned. We'd like to give you a verdict on them but the noisy show floor at IFA made it too difficult to judge the quality.
What we could test out is the Predator TacSense which is essentially force feedback which you'll be used to experiencing in most modern steering wheels and gaming controllers. We tried it out with Asphalt 8 and found it improved the experience a great deal – making the usual vibrations in normal tablets seem even more paltry.