Acer has just announced two heavily redesigned convertibles at IFA: the R13 whose screen swings around in its bezel, and the R14, whose screen hinges a full 360 degrees. Oh, and another cheap Windows tablet.
If either of those designs sound familiar, that’s because… they are. Let’s take the R13 first, pictured above. A redesigned version of the original R-series, Acer has fortunately moved the touchpad so it no longer sits above the keyboard (a dumb idea in the first place). It now bears a striking similarity to the Dell XPS 12, with a screen shrunk from 15.6 to 13.3 inches.
The standard model comes with a 1920 x 1080 screen resolution, although there will be an option to snag one with a 2560 x 1440 screen too. In terms of guts, there will be a choice of Core i5 or i7 processors, up to 1TB of storage and up to 8GB of RAM. Battery life is rated at eight hours. It should be available in October from $US900.
Next up is the new R14, pictured below, which looks very much like a (pretty ugly) take on the Lenovo Yoga. Packing an Intel processor in the base model — though stretching up to i3, i5 and i7 if you pay more — there’s also the option of discrete NVIDIA GeForce 820M graphics, an optional pen digitiser, up to 1TB of storage and up to 12GB of RAM. Available mid-October, it will start at $US600.
Finally, among plenty of other products launched by Acer, there’s also another new, cheap Windows tablet. The Iconia Tab 8 W uses an 8-inch, 1280 x 800 IPS display and pretty standard guts — an Atom processor and a battery offering 8 hours of life — but comes loaded with Windows 8.1 with Bing and a free year of Office 365. It will be available in November for $US150; add it to what will become a growing list.