Acer Aspire S3 13.3-inch Intel Core i7 Ultrabook Review

The Acer Aspire S3 is a major new entrant to the emerging market for ultraportables, ultra-thin but powerful notebook PCs with reduced components to keep the space and if you like the idea of a portable Windows computer than can be carried in one hand or tucked under your armpit rather than lugged around in a shoulder bag, the S3 is a delight. The Acer Aspire S3 offering just a 20GB SSD in combination with a 320GB mechanical hard drive, where other Ultrabooks have a full-size SSD and it was able to resume from sleep in a matter of seconds, its performance and boot time were well behind the competition. Acer is upping the specs of the S3 with adding a 240GB SSD and an Intel Core i7 processor and upping the price to $1,299.

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook is now available with a solid state drive (SSD) and energy-efficient second-generation Intel Core i7 processor power. This new breed of ultra-light-weight PCs are just half-an-inch thin and weigh about 3 pounds. New technology lets them power on instantly and connect to the Web in seconds. Available this week at several retailers including Amazon, NewEgg, TigerDirect and BestBuy.com, the Core i7 version of the Aspire S3 Ultrabook retails for $1299 (Core i5 versions begin at $899). A bit more about the Aspire S3 Ultrabook:

• The 13.3-inch HD widescreen LED-backlit display features a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1366 x 768 resolution, delivering sharp, rich visuals.
• Acer Green Instant On lets you resume your computing session in less than 2 seconds.
• Instant Connect gets you on the Internet in just 2.5 seconds – four times faster than conventional connections.
• mere .51 inches thin and weighing a scant 2.98 pounds, the Aspire S3's aluminum/ magnesium chassis delivers strength in a lightweight design.
• Hybrid Standby Technology provides up to 50 days of standby power and up to 6 hours of continuous usage.
• Intel Core i7 Processor and roomy 240GB solid state drive deliver as much performance and storage capacity as much larger, full-size notebooks.
• now for $1299 at several retailers including Amazon, NewEgg, TigerDirect and BestBuy.com.

In below you will find a review of Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook via pcworld.com :

Acer is offering its new Aspire S3 for a comparatively reasonable $899 (as of November 16, 2011) and you can find it discounted to sub-$850 online and $850 isn't a budget price by today's standards. The Aspire S3 looks good and seems to handle well when folded, there's no weird weight distribution that might make it susceptible to drops when you're juggling it with other gear. The plastic shell isn't as rigid as the alloy shells on some Ultrabooks, but it's functional. Opening the Aspire S3 reveals a muted gray keyboard that almost disappears into the chassis and otherwise is notable for possessing the tiniest set of navigation keys (arrows, Page Up, Page Down, and the like). They're not much bigger than cell phone Chiclet keys and about the only positive is that the Page Down and Page Up keys are discrete, so they don't require a separate function key press. The Aspire S3 ships with a 1.6GHz Intel Core-i5 2467M low-voltage CPU that clocks in at 1.6GHz and offers a maximum Turbo setting of 2.3GHz. The laptop has 4GB of total system memory, but 0.15GB of that goes to the Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics. The 2467M CPU, with its 3MB of L3 cache, probably contributed to the model's middling WorldBench 6 score of 97. Battery life was a bit low for an ultraportable laptop, too, at just under 5 hours (the average for the category is around 6.5 hours). Owing to Acer's use of integrated graphics, the Aspire S3 is no gaming powerhouse either. You can play some games at limited resolutions and detail settings, but serious gaming is best left to other systems. The display has an average, 1366-by-768-pixel native resolution. Photos looked good and HD content streamed over the local area network smoothly. However, streaming Netflix HD content looked even softer than it usually does. In addition, the LCD panel's range of angles for high-quality viewing is rather restricted with noticeable color and contrast shifts at minor displacements from dead center.

Audio is another weak point. Even with the supplied Dolby Home Theater activated, stereo imaging was vague and seemed to wander from one side to another. ou'll definitely want headphones for any serious audio work. The Aspire S3 is deficient in ports and network connectivity, in part because of design constraints common to all Ultrabooks. On the rear are a pair of USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI connector. A lone audio jack appears on the left, and an SD Card slot on the right. There are no USB 3.0 ports. Admittedly, that array is only slightly worse than what you'd get with a MacBook Air, but the Air has a high-speed Thunderbolt port than can serve as both an I/O and a digital monitor connection. Also like the MacBook Air, the Aspire S3 lacks an ethernet jack; the only connectivity is through 802.11n Wi-Fi. And unlike the Air and most other Ultrabooks, Acer's model lacks Bluetooth support. This Aspire S3 supposedly ships with a 20GB solid-state drive and a 320GB Hitachi hard drive. The SSD is set up as a hibernation drive, which means that the unit can restore rapidly from hibernation and consequently hibernating the system is the power-down method of choice, it's more battery-efficient than sleep mode and much faster than cold-booting. But using the SSD exclusively to cache hibernation data is a waste of about 15GB of SSD space. The Acer Aspire S3 attempts to be an affordable, visually attractive, and usable Ultrabook. It only partly meets those goals. The keyboard is mostly good, but the laptop's mediocre audio quality, lack of high-speed USB, shorter-than-average battery life, and modest performance make it less than appealing.

Videos:

Acer Aspire S3 Hands On Ultrabook at IFA 2011


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