Acer Predator 8 tablet hands-on and first look

When it comes to gaming tablets, the available selection is quite limited, but there is going to be a new one to pick from soon. We go hands-on, and give you the first look at the Acer Predator 8 tablet!

Along the lines of the Acer Predator PCs, the Predator mobile devices are meant to deliver a high-end gaming experience on the go. The Predator 8 is a very unique-looking Android tablet that is designed to bring a fantastic gaming experience to a compact form factor.

The Predator is an 8-inch tablet, and you can see right off the bat that it has a look unlike any other mobile device we’ve seen so far, with its sharp and aggressive body line, and the corners, where the speakers are located, flaring out from the main body. There’s one speaker in each corner, for a total of four front-facing speakers, which Acer likes to call “Predator Quadio.” This setup is of course intended to deliver an audio experience like no other, and they do sound extremely good.

Up front is an 8-inch IPS LCD display with a Full HD resolution, that uses zero air gap technology. Acer also claims that this display supports a 100% of the NTSC color gamut, which is certainly very impressive for a screen on a tablet. Granted, it is hard to say actually how accurate that claim is without more technical testing, but it is a very good looking screen, with great viewing angles, color saturation, and brightness.

Under the hood, the Acer Predator 8 comes with an Intel Atom x7-Z8700, backed by an Intel HD Graphics GPU and 2 GB of RAM. 32 GB or 64 GB of internal storage options are available, which can also be further expanded via microSD card, by up to an additional 128 GB. For a device designed with gaming in mind, the amount of RAM sounds a little bit low, but the Intel chipset should make for a solid gaming experience and good overall performance. Should you ever need to take pictures or do video chats, there is a 5 MP primary camera on the back, along with a 2 MP front-facing unit. As is the case with most tablet cameras, this camera setup is likely not going to be very impressive though.

The Predator 8 also comes with what Acer calls TacSense technology, that provides vibrations and tactile feedback on the screen and throughout the body of the tablet when gaming, similar to what you would experience on the DualShock controller of the PlayStation 4. This is meant to provide for a more immersive experience when playing games, and it definitely does add to the experience. The vibrations are nice and strong, but not overly so that they feel like a distraction.

On the software side of things, the Acer Predator 8 is running Android 5.1 Lollipop, and it is a very stock-like experience, with the unfortunate exception of a lot of pre-installed bloatware. Acer has done a great job with keeping everything else as clean as possible however.

So there you have it for this first look at the Acer Predator 8 tablet! The tablet will be available in the month of November, priced at an affordable $299, and if you are looking for a gaming tablet that could potentially rival the NVIDIA Shield tablet, the Acer Predator 8 tablet is likely going to be your best bet.