Finally I had the chance to get some quality time, a few hours, with Onkyo latest Windows 7 tablet, the 11.6” TW317.

Please remember that this is a “First Impression” and that it will require more time to get a better acquainted with the TW317, still having the chance to play with it for few hours and even had the time to wipe the original OS to install an English one it gave me a unique chance to test this baby.

The first things that will stick you is the excellent build quality of the TW317, this Onkyo tablet looks and feel great as well as being well designed. The TW317 is also huge with its 11.6” screen (1366×768) and yet amazingly thin with a total size of just 295x195x14mm only!

The screen is bright, clear but the plastic covering it is not unfortunately made from the best plastic ever giving you some kind of “chess pattern” and even some “dark spots” when viewed in certain angles. If First thought that I had to clean the censor of my Camera or my lens, but nope, there is indeed some “weird” spots on several part of the screen only visible when tilting the screen.

The Onkyo TW317 comes with an Atom N450 CPU at 1.66GHz, 1GB of RAM and a 32GB Sandisk SSD, and to be frank, these may be a bit too light for running Windows 7, giving for example slow response time when tilting the screen in order to change the tablet screen rotation (See Video). The Touch panel is “OK”, but not amazingly responsive neither.

Bottom line, the TW317 is a promising tablet, but it would have been better with 2GB of RAM and a better CPU when installed with Windows 7. Unfortunately, the TW317 is only available with the N450 ATOM and cannot have its RAM or internal battery upgraded.
Maybe, just Maybe, the TW317 in its actual specs would have been better running on Ubuntu or any other Linux OS than Microsoft still “over weight” but very capable Windows 7 OS.