Acer Aspire Switch Alpha 12 S

one note,fresh paint, acer screen grasp, sticky note and windows journal are the 5, I guess only one is acer's

 

Wouldn't that be the Samsung TabPro S? Seems to me if all you want is Core M that would be the one to get.

 

Thanks for replying - since you can't tweak TDp settings, I guess I don't know how your energy settings would get you to 6.5 hours battery life. Can you share your battery-report.html file to support this claim? I know somebody a few pages back claimed they governed processor speed at 50% max clock rates within windows power settings and still only achieve around 5 hours total life. That's a huge sacrifice in performance to only gain about 30 more minutes battery life. A 50% throttled Core i5 processor might as well be less than a fully used Core M3 considering the performance gap is only about 25% between the two in normal use (outside of sustained workloads).

If you can run this at 0% brightness during the day - that might steer me away as well since I need comfortable viewing performance at night, and not a searing hot screen. Overall, most reviews mention it's brightness - but still say it falls short of the SP4 at the top end. I'm not sure about 0-100% control though, and sounds like the Acer, once again, may not have chosen to set the brightness scale correctly.

I'm not trying to simply slam the Acer either - like I said, it's very tempting - in fact I have on arriving in the mail tomorrow. I'd likely stick with it had I not seen a new Core M3 SP4 for $700 recently. At this point I'm debating the $700 Acer over an $800 Surface - that gap isn't as wide right now (when I originally considered the surface M3 was around $999 with keyboard).

 

I'm pretty sure the sum of my post should NOT be "all I want is a Core M". The TabPro is very very constrained Core M3 - they don't allow it to reach max TDp (9 watts) and throttle the device heavily. The battery life is solid. It's pretty impressive when you view SP4 Core m3 GPU scores - they come pretty close to the HD520 because MS allows the device room to breathe at the top end. Again, I am looking for the most "balanced" device that reflects the depth of engineering choices made in the build up of the device. My assertion is that other competitors are doing a good job, but still fall short of the overall excellent job that Microsoft did in creating the SP4.

 

The iPad Pro? That's a weird comparison - that's way too limited a device for my tastes and use cases. I appreciate the dilemma with other ultrabooks though - I previously owned a Dell XPS13 with UHD+ screen. It's battery life is also around 6 hours in use, although I remember Dell had originally made the same mistake Acer is making by not allowing that low processor idle state. I looked at the Spectre X360 - but it's pretty heavy overall (for me) and battery life in the high res screen department isn't wonderful either. I think the Zenbook line is highly competitive with battery life - but there are compromises in usability there and again the Zenbook's use 1080P screens (not the end of the world at this screen size). I should consider the Zenbook Flip though - if only it had a backlit keyboard!!

 

Same for me - around 6+ with settings slightly tweaked. In fact, I appreciate Acer's setup - all processing power possible. If you want a longer battery, you can easily set up a power profile that limits CPU usage, screen brightness, etc.

 

That's good news, can you share your battery-report.html file? Every site I've reviewed, and majority of forum posters mention 4.5-5 (maybe 5:15) hour battery life. Also, if you have to do freq limitation to achieve battery life - I guess that's just kind of odd since you'll make the i5 act less than a Core M3 by doing that. But I guess if you want full power when plugged in and then really crank things back on the road, you'd be ok. That's just too much management for most consumers.

If you want this full power device and need it, I think the Switch Alpha is an amazing value. I just think Acer engineers could balance their TDp choices better and extend the battery life.

Also - it should be noted the SP4 Core M3 is a 7-8 hour device, not 6.5.

 

So Switch Alpha 12 uses USB-PD in its port for sure ? Can I use even 60 Watt Type-C charger with it ?
Also, you think battery will deteriorate faster if I use Type-C charger instead of official chargers...

You seems like an expert on this, please let me know.

 

You can't really compare the two when the prices are so extremely different. The comparable SP4 with a KB is $900 more than the same Acer when bought at Microcenter. (And it has a fan and a slightly duller screen)

 

It's only any good if your confident enough to leave your charger at home when you go to school or work in the morning. Otherwise 5,6,7 or 8 makes no difference and especially with the hoops you have to jump through to get what the manufacturers claim.