First impressions of Acer Predator 8 – a powerful tablet designed for gamers

LaptopMedia.com Najważniejsze informacje First impressions of Acer Predator 8 – a powerful tablet designed for gamers

Od: Hristiyan Tsutsev 10 Listopad 2015 / 12:08 0

Predator is Acer’s famous gaming lineup and it is now taking its first step towards the tablet market. The manufacturer is counting on their Predator 8 tablet to grab the attention of gamers, as it boasts an 8-inch screen and it’s specially designed for gaming on Android. Nothing out of the usual for every high-end tablet, however, Acer has found a way to make their offering stand out among competitor models.

For starters, Predator 8 has a unique design. You’ve definitely never seen anything like it. Its appearance is a combination of red, gray and black colors with aggressive design lines that most gamers look for. Even though its construction is plastic for the most part, there is a metal plate on the back making it a bit more premium. Anyway, there are two slightly protruding black soft plastic parts located on the sides. They provide a better grip while holding it horizontally. Keep in mind that the tablet is a bit “edgy”, but that’s part of its aggressive appearance. The front side of Predator 8 is just as fascinating as the rest of it. On it we find four red colored loudspeakers that stand out to the gray background. Unfortunately, the unit we have is an engineering sample and we can’t test the capabilities of the speakers for now. If we manage to get a hold of a final product we’ll make sure to update the information in our upcoming review.

As we already mentioned, the tablet has an 8-inch screen with relatively thin bezels and it could be held with one hand, due to the 8.7 mm profile and 350 grams weight. The resolution of the display is Full HD (1920 x 1080) and it uses an IPS panel that provides rich and vibrant colors, high contrast ratios and wide viewing angles. Acer claims that the screen covers 100% of the NTSC color gamut guaranteeing vivid colors.

We should also note that the SoC of the device is Intel Atom x7-8700 while the GPU is Intel HD Graphics – it should be powerful enough to provide smooth gameplay regardless of the game from Google Play. Anyway, we’ll make sure to check the computing and graphic performance of the tablet, by running various benchmarks and tests, and compare the results to other competitor models to see which one comes on top. For now we can say that we’re pleased with its performance and the good news is that we haven’t experienced any overheating yet.

Moving on to the software department where Acer has made sure that you’ll never get bored. Predator 8 runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop and Acer’s UI on top with a wide variety of pre-installed apps as well as the Iconia Suite package that provides a lot of useful features and functions. Some of them include quick access to certain apps and split screen multitasking. You’ll also find the so-called “Media Expert” that allows you to manually set various screen and sound settings depending on the mode you’re in – Movie, Game, etc.

Specs sheet

OS	Android 5.1 (Lollipop)
CPU	Intel Atom x7-8700 (4-core, 2.4GHz)
RAM	2GB
Storage	32GB/64GB
GPU	Intel HD Graphics
Display	8-inch IPS capacitive multi-touch screen with 1920 x 1080 resolution
Connectivity	Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, GPS
Cameras	5MP (rear) / 2MP (front)
Features	microSD memory card slot micro USB v2.0 port built-in microphone 3.5 mm headphone jack four built-in loudspeakers
Dimensions and weight	218 x 127 x 8.7 mm/ 350 grams