Acer’s 11” Core i3 Windows 8 Tablet Lacks ThunderBolt

Acer has demonstrated the Iconia W700 tablet back at Computex 2012, but the design has suffered some changes and not all of them bring good news. The initial design originally also included a ThunderBolt port that is now missing.

During this year’s IDF event in San Francisco, California, Acer has again displayed the updated W700 design.

We’re very happy that tablet makers are building such powerful producs as we’re passionate about real performance and less interested in marketing gimmicks like some battery life figure that doesn’t correspond to real life measurements.

Acer’s new Core i3 powered tablet is reportedly 972 grams (2.14 pounds) heavy and almost 12 millimeters (0.47”) thick, but the company has reportedly decided against including a fast ThunderBolt port.

Such connectivity would have allowed the tablet to achieve some powerful capabilities when connected with external ThunderBolt enclosures such as Lucid’s graphics card unit that we presented here or Elsa’s Magma box that we reported here.

The new tablet is powerful nevertheless, but considering that it doesn’t excel in slimness or lightness we don’t really understand Acer’s reasoning here.

Despite lacking the keyboard, the weight and thickness are comparable with several UltraBooks and restricting the feature set doesn’t seem like the right idea to compensate on these downsides.