It's pretty clear that every Ultrabook maker is gunning for the MacBook Air, and the Aspire S3 is no exception. However, Acer had to make some sacrifices to keep its price low--no duralumin or unibody designs here. The lid of the S3 is a brushed aluminum, but the underside and deck are made of a silver-colored plastic, and it's made to look like a unibody design even though it is not. lenovo yoga 3 power adapter The black hinge area at the rear accommodates the S3's ports as well as an air vent. Four rubber pads on the bottom also keep the S3 from sliding around on a desk.At just 0.51-0.6 inches thick, the S3 is a shade thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Air, which tapers from 0.11 to 0.68 inches. Weighing 3 pounds even, the S3 is also on a par with Apple's ultraportable. This system easily slipped into a small messenger bag and was barely noticeable as we rode home on the subway.The Acer Aspire S3 has been around in various guises for a few years now, but the 2014 edition is quite a departure from the old models. Where the original alienware x51 330 watt power supply Aspire S3 was quite rightly regarded as a bit of a MacBook Air rip-off in its looks, the new version looks a lot closer to the Acer Aspire S7, an Ultrabook with a snazzy glass lid.In order to keep costs down, the Acer Aspire S3's lid isn't made of glass, but it still looks and feels as if it is. The aluminium frame is lacquered with several layers of glossy paint, providing a look quite unlike the metal underneath.The rest of the Acer Aspire S3 design is sound, if not quite as pristine and perfect pa5178u 1aca as the very priciest, prettiest Ultrabooks. The prevalence of obvious seams and the slightly uneven distribution of the chunky screen bezel mean it's not as pretty as a MacBook Air. But then few laptops are.
Screen
The display itself has also been given a huge-if fairly predictable-upgrade. Rather than a TN-based 1,366 x 768 pixel screen, the new Aspire S3 has a 13.3-inch Full HD IPS touchscreen display. It offers far better viewing angles than the last model, lenovo x240 charger which is a must if the 'screen sharing' hinge mechanism is to be remotely useful.Although we've not yet had a chance to compare the 2014 edition and the old Aspire S3 screen side-by-side, image quality appears to be significantly improved, especially in terms of colour reproduction.
Ports
The connections you get on the body are sound for an Ultrabook. There are two USB 3.0 ports and another USB 2.0 one, plus an HDMI port for connection to a monitor or TV. There's also an SD card slot with a plastic bung to keep it free of grime when not in use. lenovo y50 battery replacement All the connections are on the sides, with the back reserved for a heat outlet.There's no Ethernet port, though. Instead there's an Acer Converter port, which is a proprietary socket. With a separate (not included) cable, you can turn this into a VGA port, or a RJ45/VGA/USB 2.0 combo. What's missing? The obvious one is a Mini DisplayPort.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The island-style keyboard on the S3 isn't the worst we've ever used, but it was a bit stiff ; keys were large and well spaced (with the exception of the arrow keys, which were a pain), but we would have preferred a little more travel and responsiveness. acer aspire switch 10 power supply On more than one occasion, the keyboard missed our inputs when we were typing at a fast pace, and we had to make a conscious effort to press harder.The 3.4 x 2.5-inch Elan clickpad wasn't as large as the one on the MacBook Air, but it was big and responsive enough for us to execute multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom. We like that Elan added a four-finger swipe that lenovo miix 10 charger automatically minimizes all windows to reveal the desktop. The click action on the bottom of the pad was a little mushy, though, and people who use two hands may find that it sticks.
Performance
Inside the Aspire S3 is a second-gen 1.6-GHz Intel Core i5-2467M Processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive, which powered the system to a PCMark Vantage score of 5,489. That's a good 500 points above the category average, but the MacBook Air we reviewed, which has a 1.7-GHz Core i5 processor and 128GB SSD, notched a far higher 11,230 when we ran the same test in Boot Camp. We saw similar results with Geekbench: The Aspire S3 scored 3,538, which, again, is 500 points higher than the ultraportable notebook average (3,062), but second to the MacBook Air (5,860). sony vaio pro 13 battery Still, the S3 is more than speedy enough to play movies, type in Google Docs, and listen to music.Sadly, the mechanical hard drive wasn't the fastest in the business: It took 3 minutes and 35 seconds to duplicate a 4.97GB folder of multimedia. That's a rate of 23.7 MBps, which is far below the category average of 37 MBps.It took the Aspire S3 8 minutes and 3 seconds to perform a VLOOKUP command in OpenOffice; that's nearly two minutes longer than the category average (6:14) as well as the MacBook Air (6:16).Outfitted with Intel HD graphics, the S3 returned results that weren't great, but weren't unexpected either. On 3DMark06, the S3 scored 3,257, m15x battery which is about 400 points above the average and 1,000 points higher than the Samsung Series 9 (2,188) but 1,000 points below the MacBook Air (4,236).When playing World of Warcraft, the S3 averaged 26 frames per second with the display at its native resolution and effects set to Good; that's a little more than half the category average of 43 fps. When we maxed out the settings, the S3's frame rates dropped to just 11 fps, which is only 6 fps below average, but still quite unplayable. The MacBook Air managed 28 fps at these same settings.
Software
Acer keeps it clean on the Aspire S3, including little pre-loaded software. Home-grown apps include Acer Deep Sleep settings, which lets you specify whether the notebook goes into deep sleep after 120 minutes or 480 minutes; Acer Backup Manager; Acer Crystal Eye Webcam; dell m3800 power supply the Acer Games portal; and Clear.fi for sharing multimedia wirelessly across a network (pictured).Other software includes AUPEO Internet radio, newsXpresso (a nice-looking RSS reader, pictured), Nook for PC, Skype, Microsoft Office Starter, and a 60-day trial of McAffee Internet Security.
Verdict
Priced at $899, it's clear that Acer is trying to undercut its Ultrabook competitors, but in doing so, it had to make a few sacrifices. For example, the Aspire S3's chassis is plastic, not metal, and it has a mechanical hard drive, not an SSD. It's also missing lenovo y50 70 battery the little niceties, such as a high-res display and a backlit keyboard. While we might be willing to compromise on those issues, the one area where we can't compromise is battery life, and unfortunately the S3 falls way short in that category. The less-sexy ASUS U36SD is also less than an inch thick, and it offers much better performance and 8 hours of battery life for around the same price as the S3. Or, Lenovo batteries for just $200 more, you can get ASUS' Zenbook UX31, which has a higher-res screen and a powerful 256GB SSD.