Budding artists looking for a digital canvas have previously had to buy into Samsung's pricey S Pen-equipped Note tablets or use Nvidia's somewhat haphazard DirectStylus technology, but that might change later this year when the refreshed Acer Iconia One 8 arrives. It's a budget-friendly tablet with a touchscreen so sensitive, you can use a regular pencil to sketch out your ideas.
With a wide selection of colour choices, rubber skins and notebook-style flip covers, the Iconia One 8 is an undeniably fun tablet, but underneath Acer's proprietary Precision Plus technology is seriously clever. Using much smaller touch sensors than a typical tablet, the Iconia One 8 makes it much easier to draw precisely or make small marks on a page. We've struggled with other tablets in the past when working on Japanese-inspired line drawings, but here the increased accuracy should mean much more intricate sketches. You don't need to use a special stylus either, as the display can detect faint pressure from a regular pencil. It can't detect pressure in the same way a Wacom-powered digitiser panel might, but if precision is key we've yet to see any tablet match the One 8.
Regardless of which of the ten colours you opt for, the Iconia One 8 is a perfectly portable 8in tablet. Weighing 355g and 9.5mm at its thickest point, we could hold it comfortably in one hand and still reach a large portion of the display, thanks to the thin bezels on each of the vertical sides. The textured crisscross pattern on the back creates plenty of grip, too, so we weren't worried about it slipping out of our hands.
The 8in display uses an IPS panel with zero air gap lamination, which helps reduce internal reflections and bring out the colours in any image. The display certainly looked bright and vibrant, but we'll have to wait until we get our colour calibrator onto it to give an absolute verdict on screen quality. We can say that the 1,280x800 resolution is a little disappointing, however; with Tesco's Full HD Hudl 2 available for £100, not having a 1,920x1,080 panel is a major negative mark against the One 8. We don't know whether this was a compromise in order to add the extra touchscreen sensitivity, but it would certainly make sense if that was the case.
Inside, a quad-core Intel Atom processor provides plenty of power for everyday Android apps, and can comfortably play 3D games as well. Unfortunately with no Wi-Fi access we weren't able to download and install our usual benchmark apps, so we'll have to wait until we get a review unit into the office to pass final judgment on performance. We do at least know that with 16GB or 32GB of on-board storage and a microSD card slot, you shouldn't run out of space for apps or games in a hurry. You should be able to squeeze around eight and a half hours of battery life out of a full charge.
The Iconia One 8 is the first time we've seen Android 5.0 Lollipop on an Acer tablet, which gave us the perfect opportunity to see what the company has planned in terms of UI customisation. Thankfully, much of Google's original Material Design ethos has remained intact, including the navigation buttons, pull-down notification drawer, home screen layout and app drawer, although Acer has still added its own apps and widgets. The settings screen is skinned to look almost identical to previous Iconia tablets have been, which is rather jarring.
Unsurprisingly for a budget tablet, the Iconia One 8's front and rear cameras don't have huge pixel counts; 5-megapixels on the rear is acceptable but the 0.3-megapixel webcam on the front is disappointing considering 2-megapixels is the norm with most other manufacturers. With non-final firmware on the device we can't make any image quality judgments quite yet, but the 88-degree wide angle capture from the back camera is a welcome addition. It lets you fit more of a scene in a shot without having to step too far away.
We walked away from our early first look impressed with the Iconia One 8. The enhanced touchscreen sensitivity could be a real boon to digital artists, performance is right on the money and Android 5.0 Lollipop is mostly untouched. However, the £140 RRP could be its undoing in the UK, when the Tesco Hudl 2 beats it for resolution yet costs £40 less. We'll have to wait until launch to find out if customers decide a more sensitive screen is worth paying extra for.
The Acer Iconia One 8 is set to go on sale later this month in the UK, with prices starting from £139.