From 26 March, ALDI will be selling the Medion Akoya P2212T; an 11.6 inch touchscreen laptop that converts into a Windows 8.1 tablet. With a price tag of just $599, it’s one of the most affordable Windows 8.1 laptop/tablet hybrids on the market. But will you be able to live with the necessary hardware concessions? Let’s take a look at the specs.
The Medion Akoya P2212T’s main claim to fame is its flexible multimode touchscreen display which can be detached from the keyboard and used as a standalone Windows tablet. The screen boasts a native resolution of 1920×1080 pixels which makes it a solid choice for multimedia playback.
Other noteworthy specifications include a 64GB SSD, USB 3.0 connectivity, a 500GB hard drive, an inbuilt webcam and a reported 10 hours of battery life. Connectivity options are also impressive: on the tablet you get an audio jack, a microSD card slot, micro-HDMI, a USB 2.0 port and the aforementioned USB 3.0. The base unit adds an additional pair of USB 2.0 ports. You also get WLAN IEEE 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0.
The Medion Akoya P2212T is powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N2920 CPU clocked at 1.86GHz and 4GB of DDR3L RAM. This should be plenty of grunt for tablet usage, but we suspect the unit may struggle when it comes to taxing laptop applications such as HD video rendering.
This probably isn’t helped by all the bloatware: there’s a huge array of Cyberlink and Ashampoo products pre-installed on the device, along with trial versions of Office 365 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2014. In other words, your first port of call should be the Add/Remove Programs page.
But this is a relatively small quibble. All in all, we think the Medion Akoya P2212T looks pretty good on paper. It comes with plenty of connectivity for the asking price, impressive battery life, a full HD screen and a versatile form factor that is essentially two products in one.
The deciding factor will come down to how well the display handles — if you get the chance, have a play around with the touchscreen prior to purchase to see how responsive it is. It’s also worth bearing in mind that 11.6 inches is pretty bulky for a tablet; if portability is your main requirement, you might want to go with something smaller.
[Via ALDI Special Buys]
Comments
7 responses to “Dealhacker: Get A Windows 8.1 Laptop/Tablet Hybrid From ALDI For $599”
The real deciding factor is nothing you’ll find on paper. It’s how it fares with power management. How solid it is. How well thought out the design is. And how long it lasts before it starts developing frustrating quirks.
Microsoft is clearing out the original Surface Pro 128GB for $599 now ($539 with academic discount), much better processor, bigger storage, lighter weight, digitiser pen – but the keyboard costs extra. Quite a few other manufacturers have similar products now – Asus Transformer, Sony Vaio Tap, Dell Venue Pro. I think these work really well as a travel laptop, especially on a plane, where the 11 inch screen means you can fit it on a tray table, and on a train where you can just go tablet mode.
Don’t think 64GB of storage space is quite enough…
The 64GB is storage for the tablet. The laptop has a 500GB hard drive. Having said that, you won’t get 64GB of usable space because the system will use a bigger chunk than the alternative OS’s.
Realised as soon as I posted. It’s still pretty woeful though. The large footprint of Windows 8.1 and the bloatware preinstalled doesn’t help either.
For an 11.6″ laptop, it shouldnt be a main storage device anyway. 500GB is plenty to store a small library of movies, tv shows, and a chunk of music along with your work. And the tablet space isn’t any different to many on the market.
Overall if you want a 11.6″ tablet with laptop usability, its quite a good deal. The specs are better then most things you see for this price range. (heck even native 1080p resolution is quite rare).
Would love to turn sonething like this into a media player. Hate turning on the tv just to select a song to play.