Hands on: Acer’s Aspire P3 is an Ultrabook trapped in a tablet’s body

Highs

• Lightweight and thin
• Good battery life
• Ultrabook performance

Lows

• Shallow keyboard
• Case seems a bit flimsy
• Tablet's not easy to remove
• Can't adjust viewing angle

At Acer’s global press conference today in New York City, the company surprised us with three very intriguing products: the convertible Aspire R7, the Iconia A1 tablet, and the Aspire P3 Ultrabook. Acer’s corporate president Jim Wong stressed that the PC industry is changing extremely fast, and that different areas, like mobile and computing, are crossing over much faster than before. The manufacturer’s goal is to change the computer to computing, which it aims to do with its concept of “duality,” or the touch and type we’ve been growing more and more accustomed to over the past five years – but especially over the last six months since the release of the touch-heavy Windows 8 operating system.

Acer is trying to cross over consumption and creation, which is evident in the Aspire P3 Ultrabook. Though it’s called an “Ultrabook,” it’s unlike any Ultrabook we’ve ever seen, and that’s because it’s not exactly in the standard body of an Ultrabook. In fact, it’s actually a slate. Acer may be calling it an Ultrabook, but it’s actually a tablet with a detachable keyboard cover, like the Surface Pro

The convertible P3 has a n Intel Core i3 or i5 processor. Basic tasks and Web browsing seemed speedy during our hands-on time. At just 0.77 inches thick, and weighing just over 3 pounds, the P3 is comfortable to hold and we could see using it as a tablet to watch movies and play casual games. We were told the battery life would be about six hours if you’re using it for things like watching movies, so this will easily get you by on a cross-country trip.

But there are some issues. For starters, there’s no way to adjust the viewing angle of the slate because the keyboard it fits into only has one ridge to rest the edge of the tablet. So, if you’re sitting on the plane and need to tilt your P3 forward or backward for a better viewing angle, you’re out of luck. (This is also a problem on the Surface.) The 11.6-inch display also offers only standard HD, at 1366 x 768 pixels, while many competing tablets have full 1080p resolutions, or higher. The IPS display offers wide viewing angles, as well. Like many new devices,  the display still looked pretty darn good even when tilted at a steep angle.

The full-sized chiclet keyboard was fairly flat, since it acts as the other side of the cover, so you don’t get a lot of bounce back when typing. Still, we found the keyboard much more useable than the Type Cover keyboard that you can buy for the Surface Pro. Though we can see the Aspire P3 being compared to the Surface Pro, it also reminded us of the Lenovo ThinkPad 2, which is another tablet/keyboard combo. The ThinkPad 2 comes with a stylus though, whereas the Aspire P3’s case only has a spot for a stylus – you’ll have to pay extra for pen-based input.

From our fleeting time with the Aspire P3, we weren’t blown away by it in any way, but we’re hoping to be proved wrong when we’re able to get some real hands-on time and do an in-depth review. The Aspire P3 is definitely a contender to the Surface Pro, so let’s hope that Acer did a better job with its convertible than Microsoft did with its version.