Windows 8 Ready Devices

Acer S7

A stunner as far as looks go. It is sturdy yet light weight, and the display appears more robust than the base. The 13 inch display with gorilla screen protection is crisp and bright and supports multi-touch for the real Windows 8 experience. It's slimmer than Macbook Air at 0.46 inches to Macbook Air's 0.66 inches. It boots up in a decent 11 seconds and for doing that you don't have to press a button, just opening the lid is sufficient. You still have a Start button though. The metal keyboard has sturdy backlit aluminium keys and a small but great touchpad.

It is powered by Intel Core i5 processor but has only got 4 GB RAM. For connectivity, it relies entirely on Wi-Fi, has 2 USB 3.0 ports and a microSD card slot. It gives a backup of upto 4 hours, which is not much but decent enough. The price of Rs 89 k is at par with Macbook Air 13 and emphasises the fact that convertibles are going to be expensive. The touch experience on the conventional Windows interface is not as smooth as the Metro tile one, as they still have smaller icons that are easier to find and operate with a cursor.

Acer Iconia W510

The new Acer iconia is a stunning tablet-cum-ultrabook. The detachable keyboard converts it into a ultrabook and the 10-inch display part, being light and stylish is as good as the Asus or the Samsung tablet. It weighs just 680 gms. It is one of the first Acer products with Windows 8. The tablet's multitouch screen is Gorilla glass protected and has a display resolution of 1366x768p. The transition from tablet to notebook is easy and fast and works quite well. The display can open backwards upto 360 degrees and when turned the other way, the keyboard can be used as a support stand. It has an 8 MP camera on the front and 2 MP on the back.

It comes with dual core Atom processor and 2 GB RAM. The Windows experience is good and the apps run as smoothly as you would expect on an ultrabook. The device is even available without the keyboard, as a standalone tablet, at a lesser price. The keyboard, just like the Aspire S7 has a handsome metal base with white plastic-based chicklet keys. The tablet is robust and has mini HDMI, micro USB, micro SD, WiFi for connectivity along with USB 2.0 on the keyboard dock. Both dock and tablet have batteries and putting them together can enhance the battery backup upto 18 hours. It is yet to be launched in India and will come in two variants, 32 GB and 64 GB.

Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13

This is one of the converged devices from Lenovo which gives both tablet and PC experience through a touch-based display. It looks like a normal Ultrabook, but you can fold the screen lid, on the two metal hinges, to convert it into a tablet PC, or you can use the keyboard as a stable support stand and use Yoga for small presentations.

It comes in 3 variants: Intel Core i3, i5 and i7, and supports 4GB/8GB RAM and 128GB SSD. It has a 13 inch multi-touch screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, front web cam with 720p, Windows 8 metro tiles and through Windows desktop can be shuffled between through a simple swipe. It has USB, power button on the edge, SD card slot, USB 3.0, has a 4-cell battery that can give up to 4 hrs backup. It has a nice, flat chicklet keyboard without backlit keys and a wide touchpad with big rubberised and comfy handrest make a great Windows 8 device. It is good for decent work and has Intel HD4000 graphics, the multi-touch is pretty responsive to regular gestures.

Sony Viao Duo 11

As far as configuration goes, Sony Viao Duo 11can be called a powerful hybrid PC running on Windows 8. It is fast and to open the keyboard you simply lift the display and it will slide automatically to become a notebook. It looks stylish but is also shaky, the reason being its size. It is an 11.6-inch multi-touch display, very useful for the Windows 8 UI. The keyboard is very small, with extremely small keys but unfortunately there is no palm rest or touchpad. As touchpad you have an optical pointer in the middle of the keyboard, and you have the right and left click on the edges. We found the touch experience really good and one can work comfortably on it.

The device is blazing fast, runs on 3rd gen Core i5 processor, 6GB RAM, 128GB SSD and has an excellent high res display with full HD resolution of 1920x1080p. It claims battery backup of up to 5 hours, when used as a tablet, but at 1.3 Kg, it appears heavy and the build quite delicate. Overall, it is a powerful tablet PC capable of handling the professional workload with its powerful configuration, good battery back-up, VGA, Ethernet, HDMI, web cam and USB 3.0 ports. However, it is amongst the costliest Windows 8 devices yet.

Acer M3 Touch

Big and burly, acer M3 touch is another Windows 8 device that comes with a big 15 inch multi-touch screen. It is big and a lot lighter for a 15 inch notebook. It is a powerful device with Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 1 GB Nvidia Geforce graphics card and is great for gaming. Since it has bigger display and has full keyboard, and comes with powerful configuration, it can be used for professional purposes. The icons are big on the large 15 inch display and are easy to touch. In the Battery Mark benchmark test it scored 4 hrs 30 mins.

It has multiple connectivity options through an optical drive, an SD card slot, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 1 USB 3.0 port and HDMI. The display is a little dull although the touch experience is great and responsive. It can open backwards up to 150 degrees, and with the onscreen keyboard you can comfortably type on it.

HTC 8X

The new HTC 8X is a Windows 8 mobile device with a stunning 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen, protected with a gorilla glass. With a resolution of 1280x720p, it is better than the iPhone 4s but inferior to Samsung S3's bigger (4.8 inch) and brighter screen. The unibody design is like an iPhone and the ultra- compact form factor with curved edges make it appear slimmer than it is. HTC 8X is powered by 1.5GHz dual-core processor along with 1GB RAM and 16GB for internal storage, which is the only form of storage avialable. Compared to this, the likes of iPhone 4S support upto 64GB of storage space.

It features an impressive front camera which supports 1080p video recording.However, the 8MP rear camera, despite good photographs supported by LED flash and auto-focus, lacks far behind the likes of Samsung S3 and iphone 4s. It has very few limitations, one of them is that it uses a micro-SIM, similar to the iPhone 3GS. Also,it has bluetooth 2.1, when Samsung S3 and many others have version 4.0. It is a great Windows 8 mobile device at a price of 35k, pipping the likes of iPhone 4s which starts from 36k but comes only second to Samsung galaxy S3 availble at 34k but has a more impressive dsiplay, more powerful quad-core processor and a better camera.