Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but when you consider that the display can tilt back 180 degrees to lie flat on a table, it becomes an issue.īoth capacitive touchscreens were very responsive, interpreting our finger gestures accurately. Horizontal viewing angles were good enough so that three people would be able to comfortably see the screen, but vertical viewing angles were quite narrow. Colors were somewhat muted while watching the trailer for Captain America, the red, white, and blue of the uniform didn't really pop. Both screens have a glossy finish, but that only proved to be an issue with the upper display, as its vertical orientation reflected more lights. The fingerprint-resistant coating helped somewhat, but you'll want to keep a cloth handy. The dual 14-inch (1366 x 768) displays on the Iconia 6120 are made out of the more durable Gorilla Glass. There are two virtual mouse buttons below, but considering the whole thing is a touchscreen, why not just make it a virtual clickpad, à la an Apple MacBook? The virtual touchpad was a smallish 2.5 x 2.1 inches, but we were able to use it as easily as a real touchpad. When we scrawled "The Quick Brown Fox," for example, it ended up as "The quick brunet."
We found this method to be much less accurate. Overall, we made many more mistakes compared to a traditional keyboard, but it worked.Īn icon in the upper left also lets you switch to a notepad, where you can add text by writing with your finger.
Any errant grazing of the screen, and we'd end up with a wrong letter. We had to be much more careful with what we did with our non-typing fingers, though. There is a smartkey correction system that works pretty decent, but by and large you’ll be needing to get it right yourself.While we weren't able to type as fast on the Iconia 6120 as with a real keyboard, we did manage a fairly quick rate after about half an hour of practice, so much so that a fair amount of this review was written using the virtual keyboard.
There is no option for resting your fingers on the screen above the keys, so for the most part you’ll be uncomfortably hovering. You can’t feel where your fingers are going, and of course you can’t always see the back keys with your hands in position. I spent a few hours each day trying to type with it and do everyday functions, and though I got better and more accurate, it simply was not comfortable nor did it amount to a speed beyond pecking. Rest your palms (or your ten digits) on the display and up pops a virtual recreation of a standard laptop keyboard and trackpad. That’s where the bottom screen comes in-or at least, where it should. The keyboard at best amounted to uncomfortable "speed pecking"
It hearkens back to one of the (many) problems facing Toshiba’s Libretto W105: there’s just too much of Windows 7 showing, too much that still requires a mouse to use. The top screen should be easy to comprehend-it’s a touchscreen Windows 7 device, meaning one in every three icons will be larger than usual while the rest of the menus will remain tiny as can be.
The virtual keyboard is still very usable, but reading text just won’t happen. These are all particularly noticeable on the bottom screen, which won’t be in an optimal viewing position unless you’ve got the device propped on an incline. Worse still, the pair suffers from a trifecta of annoyances: heavy glare, pronounced fingerprint smudging, and bad vertical viewing angles. The two 14-inch, 1366 x 768 touchscreen displays can withstand quite the digit-beating thanks to Gorilla Glass, but at the same time doesn’t always seem to register my clicks.
Making it even less portable is a 4-cell Lithium Ion that in practice lasted just over two hours per charge. The Touchbook, as Acer calls it, weights 6.2 pounds and measures about 1.3 inches thick when closed, which is all just about on par with the Dell XPS 15 equipped with a 9-cell battery. The Iconia Touchbook is more akin to a proof of concept or a prototype: some great ideas skinned over a platform that can’t handle it (Windows 7) and built into hardware not ready for prime time.