Acer Aspire Z3 in the flesh, first impressions

At yesterday’s joint launch of Acer and Microsoft Windows 10 here in Taipei, the Taiwanese company introduced their first portable All-in-One PC. It basically looks likes an over-sized Windows 10 tablet which has a 17.3-inch full HD touchscreen display. The screen is huge enough as a desktop replacement but still portable to bring along from home to work or vice-versa.

There’s a kickstand at the back you can flip out to position the device upright. It also comes with a wireless mouse and keyboard when you set it up in a desktop mode.

What makes the Aspire Z3 a little different from your typical All-in-One PCs is that this one comes with a built-in battery which allows for up to 5 hours of operation when not plugged to the power outlet.

Acer’s case use for the Z3 involves having an All-in-One PC running at home but something that is still portable and that you can unplug, take it in the car while still working (as a Windows 10 tablet) and continue the job when you get to the office.

The device runs on either an Intel Pentium N3700 or Celeron N3150/N3050 with up to 8GB of RAM and storage options of 32/60/128/256GB SSD or 500GB HDD. Despite the netbook-class processor, the device still works smoothly and largely responsive with light operations so there should be no problems if the user will mainly deal with work email, office productivity tools, video playback and web browsing.

At first glance, the device really looks like a huge Windows 10 tablet but since Acer added a kickstand and bundled it with a wireless keyboard and mouse, we understand why they want to position it as an All-in-One.

Despite its size, the Z3 is still relatively slim (15.6mm) and light (2.04kg) yet still manages to support full-sized USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, SD card reader and Dolby Audio speakers.

Acer expects to release the Aspire Z3 sometime later this year with a starting price of around Php31,000USD 528INR 44,783EUR 503CNY 3,847.