It’s amazing, but the race power in smartphones and tablets almost nothing to do with the game elements. I mean, Yes — “we became more better to play”, but only because single-core-dual-core mobile phones died of old age, and the volume in a couple of gigabytes on the game is no longer perceived as something out of the ordinary. Technological progress is relentless, so the graphic potential of modern gadgets has already outdone the PlayStation 2/Xbox first, and flagship model in some disciplines approached coolest computers of 2007-2008.
Acer Predator 8
Only the use of such facilities near-zero — all happy to pay extra for the MP/core and other selfie-camera, but to pay 500-1000 rubles for a cool game on a mobile phone is not ready no. Hence the dominance of monotonous game-paraticular with thick hints of “pay to win!”. Against this background, honest guys look only Rockstar that released for mobile phones damn old, but the “full” and “soul” of computer titles of past years.
From such soil specialized gaming devices, of course, do not grow (eternal rest Xperia Play and other brave souls), and the conventional approach only becomes “our gaming gadget because it has a promo code for the game — a week/month you will be able to feel complete human being in games-the extortioners!”. Happen, truth, exceptions, one of which we will discuss today.
Acer has long studied the reaction of the audience, before launching a gaming tablet and smartphone in a series of – April last year, gadgets wandered around the exhibitions, and Taiwanese engineers looked questioningly, saying, “you like our new products?”. People, apparently, missed the aggressive devices, so the Predator 8 has brought to pipeline all their own unique “chips” design, like the classic computers of the militants, the system vibration, cool and very rare Intel Atom processor, and “sensitive relief” as much as 50 bucks in the racing game Asphalt 8. Will be whether such improvements by the way for fans of mobile gaming — we’ll get that.
Features
Acer Predator 8
Operating system
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Screen
8”, 1920×1080, IPS, 283 ppi
Processor
Intel Atom x7-Z8700 2.4 GHz (4 cores, x86)
Graphics
Intel HD Graphics (Cherry Trail)
Operational memory
2 GB
Constant memory
32 GB, microSD slot
Link
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
primary: 5 MP, autofocus, video recording 1920×1080
front: 5 MP
Battery
4420 mAh, non-removable
Sizes
217,9x127x8,6 mm
Weight
353 g
The price at the time of publication
33 000 rubles
Where to buy
Design and management
Downloading is very pretty regardless, whether you have captured the spirit from the appearance of the “computers of the future” in movies 30 years ago or not. Doubly unexpected that the model is so memorable appearance has rolled out Acer Iconia Tab whose streamlined always been exemplary faceless. Compare Predator 8 at least with “ordinary eight-inch tablet” and feel the difference.
Predator 8 dramatically different in design from the usual tablets Acer
However, the romance of the partially vaporized, as soon as you take it “cannon judge Dredd” in hand — after the promos are expecting to feel cold steel monolithic, but in fact, from the proverbial metal produced only a narrow strip on the back cover Yes four pads on the speakers, but outside them, everywhere plastic plastic plastic…
On the other hand, for the gaming device metallic elements — not a very appropriate idea. I remember eight-inch LG G Pad 8.3 was obscenely slippery. And rolled up in a matte paint Huawei MediaPad M2 in a preheated (games too!) condition not very pleasant to the touch — rough “bucket” of metal sometimes the impression that you are a good Soviet aluminum ladle of hot pasta inside.
Beautiful tablet, but the metal housing is much less than I would like
The left side Acer Predator 8
Right edge Acer Predator 8
In General, the plastic black insert on the rear panel is fully justified, but instead a cheap imitation of “phosphor” I would like to see metal on either side of glazed panel labeled “Predator”, especially because the tablet can not work with SIM cards, and is not burdened by the need to accommodate the bulky antenna on the rear panel.
The build quality in the model mean — I remember the instance with the official presentation was so beaten down by fate that creaked all the “joints”. The tablet, which came to us on the test, the hull was not shattered, but the joints of plastic and metal (rear panel, speaker grilles) occasionally “groaning” if you desperately squeeze Predator in 8 games. For composite design have to pay.
Rear panel Acer Predator 8
The screen and sound
On the Predator side of the screen 8 is a perfect combination of a barrel of honey the spoon of tar. Bright, high-contrast IPS matrix well is read on a Sunny day, the protective glass is durable and highly resistant to scratches together with fingerprints, the viewing angles are also good. But further, gentlemen, “said the grandmother in half”.
First, even if there are four operation modes colors are always oversaturated. In principle, the tablet allows manual adjustment of this parameter, so it’s not a problem. And the problem is “stretched” to the state nazhoristo colorful settings AMOLED IPS display. The contrast matrix was bullied to artificially high values, so the level range is only 1.5 display looks darker than it should be. Color temperature is very high, so white the Predator 8 is slightly mixed with blue. And this “joy” perfectionists also have partially to reign in the regulators coarse color. But some settings didn’t fix — for example, an impressive number of spurious tones, and related this parameter to a high value DeltaE.
Another instance of the matrix, which parodies AMOLED. As is usually the case, parody is not very good
Do not think that the display in the Predator 8 is so bad that it becomes unpleasant to look at, just the culture calibration matrix in the model came out, ahem, “hateful”. If the screen of our tablet was car audio system — it would be impressive “shaking bass” where necessary, and where it is not necessary. All that stylish, fashionable and youth, but is not suitable for any other music besides hip-hop. And so with our display — colorful spectacular image is well suited for gaming, but for movies and photos are the displays better.
The display features Acer Predator 8
The maximum brightness level
380 CD/m2
Contrast
900:1
Color gamut (sRGB)
>100% sRGB
DeltaE
9
Gamma
1,5
Color temperature
8500K
But the audio system in the Predator 8 is steep without any reservations — four speakers emit very loud sound, which does not expect from a medium sized tablet. Honestly, Predator 8 sounds even slightly better model for this part of the Huawei MediaPad M2: a little clearer and bataviae. In the sound Manager there are three equalizer presets, although the speakers should be confined to “open” sounding.
The headphones sound is also not disappoint — it is subjectively higher quality than the “cheap” MediaTek MT6752/6753 and Snapdragon 615. But no frills in the sound there, so to turn the equalizer in players to achieve the ideal will not be superfluous.
Iron and games
In terms of CPU Acer Predator 8 — a rare original. Instead of the usual “twist line” of ARM processors used here is modern, powerful and expensive Intel Atom x7, which was destined to drag Windows in any netbook.
Processor speed test (Geekbench 3)
Than this processor is remarkable? Power cores — they are only four, but each of them “categorise” up to 2.4 GHz at peak load. If you want the results of “smartphones” — in front of us an alternate version of the Snapdragon 808 (LG G4, 5X Nexus, Motorola X Style). Only now modern tablets mostly become “degenerate”, and in the market there are not too many models with which Predator 8 you can really compare.
Our hero, of course, weaker 10-inch Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet (Snapdragon 810), both on CPU and on the graphics part. But he’s 20% cooler tablets based on Kirin 930 (MediaPad M2/X2) in single core load and with its 4 cores at 5% behind the Chinese OCTA-core chip. With the cool Samsung gaming Acer competes in two ways — loses 25% in multithreaded loads, but it takes 7% ahead due to the graphic component. In short, we have the third (after top-end 10-inch Sony and an exotic 10 inch Google Pixel C) on top of the tablet to the rating of gaming performance.
Very powerful and equally voracious processor originating from laptops
Gaming performance (the test 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited)
The performance of the entire system (test Antutu Benchmark 5.7)
Everyday power enough to stock — the system “flies”, in games exotic processor architecture is not felt at all. That is, Asphalt works flawlessly (even with a cool dual-zone feedback, in the style gamepad Sony DualShock, and a huge amount of in-game money), World of Tanks Blitz on maximum detail is not slow and gives more than 30 fps, Modern Combat 5 and Need for Speed No Limits “fly”, GTA Liberty City Stories slows down with “maximum” settings and works well when turned off dynamic shadows. Emulation of the PlayStation One goes on “hurrah” — the frame rate never drops below 60 fps in any of the scenes.
In General, the theory coincides with the practice — Predator 8 is certainly not “the best of the best” tablets for games, but real competition in power he has little, especially in the class “up to 10 inches”.
Wi-Fi works fine, but navigation was sluggish — a feeling that catch satellites from a smartphone running the old MediaTek chip. Predator 8 hardly finds satellites 13 (10 GPS and 3 GLONASS) and liaises with 9-10 of them. Thus, the measurement error is about 8 metres — in comparison with Snapdragon 810 (21 satellites in operation, an error of about 4 m) from the Navigator Predator 8 came out so-so.
Software
Gadgets Intel get updates on time only in the case of new ASUS ZenFone — other producers enthusiasm wanes much faster (especially Lenovo, who have the nerve to release a “new” model based on Android 4.4 in 2016). There will be updates to Android 6.0 Predator 8 is also not known, the experimental model and did not hurt the mass.
The interface of the operating system in the Acer Predator 8
But in its current form, the operating version does not cause rejection — changes just enough to differ from the “nameless Chinese”, which sets the base Android Lollipop in their models. In this case, the shell eats much less resources than EMUI Huawei devices, Lenovo VIBE UI or TouchWiz in Samsung.
The system is modified on the company’s ways, but that is not overloaded with background processes
Just edited the icons and the notification curtain, the aggregator of updates to YouTube and social networks (such as one manufactured by Samsung Brief), mnogokanalnosti, gestures and “askarali Android” just in case. Everything you need or may need is in place. There is even useless Bluelight Shield, which in theory should reduce eye fatigue by eliminating the blueness in your monitor. In practice, the effect is not noticeable, and the matrix is not calibrated, so the filter has had power.
Camera
Hope for a quality camera in tablets is not accepted — even in the flagship models, the quality of the pictures balances on average (by smartphone standards). In the less pretentious “tablets” the situation is even worse.
Example photos taken with rear camera Acer Predator 8
When looking at the characteristics of the Predator modules 8 there is no desire to use tablet cameras in General, but the rear camera of our hero produces slightly higher quality images than could be expected from 5 megapixels. Important — always use HDR and do not shoot moving objects. Our hero makes 4 pictures and sculpts of them quite digestible picture, no worse than the tablets of the middle class.
Example photos taken with the front camera of the Acer Predator 8
Camera class “in extreme cases” a cool picture can not boast
And here about video it is better to just forget — in spite of the Full HD quality “on paper” the clarity of the recordings leaves much to be desired. And front camera is similar to the notebook, and it’s not a compliment: in most cases, the picture is “noisy”, for selfe no good at all and will come only to chat with good lighting.
Autonomy
Compact tablets are not hardy — the batteries in the 7-8-inch models minimally differ in capacity from what can be found in larger smartphones, they have to serve not as an example of a larger display.
The duration of the mixed workload tests (PCMark, 200 CD/m2, min)
In the case of Acer Predator 8 the situation is further marred by an unbalanced processor — where modern ARM-fosmidomycin no load disable a block of four cores-heavyweights and sharply slow down in the appetite, initially Quad-core Intel Atom have to rely on competent maneuvers in the frequency of a Quartet of x86 cores.
Predator 8 drains quickly and under load and without it
Acer Predator 8
Use (brightness 200 CD/m2)
The duration of the work
Video from a memory card
4 hours 45 minutes
Game
3 hours 30 minutes
Reading
6 hours
It turns out the processor is not very efficient, because the time in “sleeping” state of iron (during video playback) and at maximum load differs by less than 30%. Competing models video hardware acceleration is more easier and the difference comes out twice already. In real life and in the mixed use Acer Predator gives about 4 hours of work — not enough to decide to carry 8-inch gadget, very slow charging from PowerBank on the way.
Competitors
Acer Predator 8
Huawei Mediapad M2 8.0
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0
Operating system
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Android 5.1 Lollipop
Android 5.0 Lollipop
Screen
8”, 1920×1080, IPS, 283 ppi
8”, 1920×1200, IPS, 283 ppi
8”, 2048×1536, Super AMOLED, 320 ppi
Processor
Intel Atom x7-Z8700 2.4 GHz (4 cores, x86)
HiSilicon Kirin 930 2 GHz (8 cores, 4 Cortex-A53 + 4 Cortex-A53e)
Samsung Exynos 5433 1.9 GHz Octa (8 cores, 4 Cortex-A53 + 4 Cortex-A57)
Graphics
Intel HD Graphics (Cherry Trail)
Mali-T628 MP4
Mali-T760 MP6
Operational memory
2 GB
3 GB
3 GB
Permanent memory
32 GB, microSD slot
32 GB, MicroSD slot
16 GB, slot microSD
Link
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
4G (LTE Cat6), 3G, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac), Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g/n/ac), Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, GLONASS
Camera
primary: 5 MP, auto focus, video recording 1920×1080
front: 5 MP
primary: 8 MP, autofocus, video recording 1920×1080
front: 2 MP
primary: 8 MP, autofocus, video recording 2560×1440
front: 2.1 MP
Battery
4420 mAh, non-removable
4800 mAh, non-removable
4000 mAh, non-removable
Sizes
217,9x127x8,6 mm
214,8x124x8 mm
198,6×134,8×5,6 mm
Weight
353 g
330 g
265 g
The price at the time of publication
33 000 rubles
25 000 rubles
38 000 rubles
Where to buy
Call vertelki:Huawei MediaPad M2 8.03 inline
Call vertelki:Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.03 inline
Huawei MediaPad 8.0 M2
From a marketing point of view, the flagship 8-inch Huawei is radically different from the hero of our review. MediaPad M2 is a metal model with sound, but without gaming ambitions. But RAM for open apps in the tablet very much, in the presence of 4G support, a more solid design and slightly better camera.
Of the shortcomings — the average level of autonomy, disconnected adaptive display brightness and overloaded functional proprietary shell. For watching videos and web surfing MediaPad is more appropriate than Predator 8.
Call vertelki:Huawei MediaPad M2 8.03 inline
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0
This “Korean” also has an indirect relationship to the games. Just because Tab S2 series is the coolest Samsung tablets regardless of their capabilities.
Remarkably skinny and lightweight, Samsung’s flagship feature is still a fast processor from the Galaxy Note 4 and, thanks to modern Super AMOLED display for long enough runs in domestic tasks. In 2016 the design of the tablet is in sharp contrast with the modern Samsung product, the quality dynamics of the Korean tablet and MediaPad Predator 8 M2, frankly, not standing next to, and for games it’s not very useful because of its “portrait” proportions in the style of the iPad mini. However, a “highlight” in this model is, and speed Tab S2 easy “will give me a light” a powerful and voracious Atom x7 in our Acer.
Call vertelki:Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.03 inline
Conclusion
Acer Predator 8
Direct competitors the Acer Predator 8 no — one no longer bother with “narrow specialization” of tablets. Before us is powerful and is not burdened by frills model, designed with one purpose — “to carry” mobile games at high graphics in Full HD resolution. It’s hard to deny that premium smartphones can do all the same not worse but even on bulky tablete details of the game are quite small, and the controls are crowded, or whether the case is 8 inches.
Another thing, what’s the advantages of the tablet is almost not correlated with its hardware is slightly more expensive Samsung is no less powerful in toys, but carries a bundle of other amenities, while the Predator remains 8 gaming model to the bone. For watching videos or active correspondence on the Internet model is not very suitable (processor “eats fuel” too zealously), and great sound and ergonomics — not so convincing arguments to pay for the gadget in excess of 30 thousand rubles. The more that the realities of the Android games such that in competitive games the winners will be the owners of “citypages”, which lowered the difference in price with a Predator 8 on “donut”.
Acer Predator 8
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
- Excellent sound quality from the speakers
- Thoughtful for gaming purposes case design
- A moderate amount of customisation Android
- High performance
- Poor autonomy
- Carelessly configured display
- Low (by the standards of the class) the quality of the cameras