Acer’s Switch 10 Pro big on features but underpowered

ACER’S Switch 10 Pro, which runs full blown Windows 8.1, puts another twist on hybrid tablet design.

FLIP, slide, pull apart. There’s plenty of options for fixing a keyboard to a tablet, especially in the Windows tablet arena where the hybrid laptop cum tablet is more the norm than the exception.

Acer’s Switch 10 Pro, which runs full-blown Windows 8.1, puts another twist on hybrid tablet design. The keyboard attaches to the tablet with a pair of magnetised tabs, similar to other pull apart designs such as the Microsoft Surface range.

But wait, there’s more.

Pull the keyboard off, flick the tablet bit around 180 degrees and it reattaches to the magnetic tabs, although now it hinges so the tablet sits up for viewing with the keyboard forming a stand in an inverted “V”, great for reading e-books in bed.

The Switch 10 Pro is aimed at the business and education market, where being able to type on a proper keyboard is a desirable feature.

The keyboard on the Switch 10 is a reasonably effective productivity tool, the solid base and raised, chiclet-style keys making it more pleasing to type on than the less substantial Type Cover on Microsoft’s Surface tablets. There’s also a proper sized touch pad that works well for cursor navigation.

The 10.1 inch, 1920 by 1200 screen also helps, with good colour and contrast and a wide range of viewing angles.

It’s a handy size and weight too, tipping the scales at just under 1.2kg with the keyboard attached.

Arrayed around the tablet edges there’s a micro HDMI out port, micro USB port (with a dongle that makes it full size) and a micro SD slot for boosting the included 64GB of storage memory. Once attached, the keyboard ­offers a full size USB port.

Acer throws in a digitiser pen as well, for jotting down notes and drawing, although there is nowhere to stow it on the tablet, and there’s a year’s subscription to ­Office 365 personal, which means you can put the Switch 10 Pro straight to work.

The little Acer packs in plenty of features for its $749 tag, but at that price something had to give — and it’s performance.

The processor is a modest 1.33GHz Intel Atom and there’s just 2GB of system memory, which means there’s not much headroom for running multiple applications.

If you are used to a tablet or laptop with a higher grunt processor and more system memory, the Acer is a bit lackadaisical when it comes to opening apps and general responsiveness.

While the grunt on tap is fine for running Office, viewing web pages and watching videos, the Switch 10 Pro isn’t really suitable for gaming or serious video editing.

I ran the Geekbench performance benchmark and got a score of 2020 for multi-core operation.

Battery life was OK. I got just under seven hours of looping video with the screen brightness turned all the way up.