Acer is obviously banking on the desirability of its dual touch-screen design to make up for the shortcomings. What’s missing? Most laptops of this size and weight also have a multiformat card reader, Bluetooth, an optical drive, and a combination USB/eSATA port, none of which appear on the Iconia. You get HDMI and VGA ports for video output, a pair of USB 2.0 ports on the left, a USB 3.0 port on the right, headphone and microphone jacks, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and gigabit ethernet. To fit the second screen, Acer clearly had to give up some of the standard features we expect on laptops of this size.
![acer iconia 6120 ring software acer iconia 6120 ring software](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_5zcD2RESxY/maxresdefault.jpg)
Push the system with more-intensive tasks, though, and it becomes sluggish. Everything is responsive enough when you’re just checking e-mail, browsing the Web, or writing documents. In our tests all of that added up to a ho-hum WorldBench 6 score of 109. The Iconia comes standard with 4GB of fairly slow RAM, and the 640GB hard drive is a pokier 5400-rpm model instead of a snappier 7200-rpm drive. Here, again, the newer generation of Intel processors would help a lot. The Iconia also relies on Intel’s integrated graphics, which is fine for everyday desktop productivity stuff, but a poor choice for high-def video playback or 3D gaming. Acer would get better performance and battery life from one of the newer Sandy Bridge models. The system ships with a 2.66GHz Core i5-480M that processor isn’t slow, but it is part of the previous generation of Intel Core CPUs. You don’t actually get a whole lot of computing power for your $1199.
#Acer iconia 6120 ring software windows#
Acer’s dual-touch implementation of a Windows laptop is about as good as you could expect it to be, but it’s just not a great idea in the first place. Still, at that price it isn’t a very good deal, and you’re better off choosing something a little more down to earth. As high-concept products go, the Iconia is fairly affordable at $1199 (as of May 2, 2011). The standout feature, however, is its second 14-inch multitouch screen, which replaces the entire lower keyboard-and-touchpad deck. In many ways it’s a pretty ordinary 14-inch laptop. The Acer Iconia 6120 laptop is one of those marquee, “halo” products meant to draw attention to the brand as much as to satisfy everyday computing needs.