Acer has announced the release of the first of its Ultrabooks, the Aspire S3, at the IFA in Berlin. The IFA is the world’s largest trade show for consumer electronics and home appliances. The Aspire S3 is the world’s thinnest Ultrabook yet and Acer claims this to be the first in a series of Ultrabooks that Acer aims to release in the future. The Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook has clearly been released to compete with the MacBook Air models which are amazing pieces of electronics, but are quite over-priced.
Features
Being the world’s thinnest Ultrabook now, at 13 mm width, the Aspire S3 has just edged out the Lenovo U300 in slimness. The Aspire S3 has a 13.3 inch HD LED screen with 1366×768 resolution, and has the Ultra Low Voltage Intel Sandy Bridge core i3, i5, and i7 processors. At 1.4 kg, the Aspire S3 has a magnesium-aluminium frame and has a well-contoured body with good styling and design.
Specifications
The Acer Aspire S3 gives users a 240 GB hard drive which is a Solid State Drive (SSD), which is the company standard. Another option that we recommend is the 320 GB or the 500 GB hard drive which has an embedded SSD integrated into the motherboard. This embedded SSD allows for faster boot up. The company claims that the Aspire S3 can start from sleep in about 1.5 seconds, if it has been asleep for less than half an hour. It can resume in about 6 seconds if it is a longer sleep, owing to its Instant On feature and the embedded SSD. The Aspire S3 has a card reader, but only has two USB ports. It also has HDMI. It also has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies, and a 1.3 megapixel web cam.
High points
The Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook has a battery life of about 7 hours, which can be stretched to 50 days because of the sleep mode feature. It is also surprisingly light at 1.4 kg, and is very convenient to carry. It has a vent-free bottom, so the lap does not get heated up and this is an excellent feature in this Ultrabook. It can also connect to a Wi-Fi in about 2.5 seconds of starting up.
Low points
Despite allowing a choice of 240 GB SSD or a 320/500 GB embedded SSD, the Acer Aspire S3 does not allow a user to actually shift the OS onto the embedded SSD, which otherwise would have helped to boost performance even further. Acer also hasn’t mentioned how much RAM would come on this as a standard.
Pricing
As of now, the rates for the European market have been announced starting at ⬠799 Euros. Compared to the Apple counterparts, the Aspire S3 does feel much better in terms of pricing as it does not tend to burn a hole in your pocket. It can also be expected that the rates for the American markets would be announced soon.
