If you’ve seen Acer’s previous Aspire S3, you’ll notice the new isn’t much different on the outside. The notebook tries to look different from the MacBook Air, and does so pretty successfully. Although possessing the same basic wedge-shaped design, instead of making one end very thick and the other end very thin, the Aspire S3 takes on a more gradual gradient than the Air or the Dell XPS 13, and I find that a more respectable look. The finish is more chrome-like than brushed aluminum; however, the keys are the same black on silver followed in a majority of ultrabooks today. The S3 has one SD card slot, two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a power connector and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
One thing I’m overjoyed about is the rear heat vent; it baffles me why some manufacturers think that placing it on the bottom is great idea. The only gripe with the Aspire S3’s vent is that it’s a bit too small, as it doesn’t seem to be as efficient as possible.
The notebook sports an Intel Core i5-3317U processor. Clocked at 1.7 GHz (Turbo Boost to 2.6) with Intel HD4000 graphics core, a substantial improvement over HD3000 from the Sandy Bridge generation.
With a single stick of 4GB DDR3-1333 RAM, S3’s storage consists of a 500GB hard disk with a 20GB cache SSD that helps speed up frequent operations. As a result, boot times are pretty quick and frequently used programs and files open quickly too. Though not as good as one large single SSD, this hybrid compromise gives an acceptable mix of performance and storage at an affordable price.
The trackpad and keyboard are acceptable at best, not great. The trackpad’s two-finger scroll needs to be adjusted, and the left click button tends to long-click too often, or not clock at all.
Then we have the heat issues — it hits 75 degree Celsius with ease under load. Even during light use, it felt uncomfortable to hold it in the lap too long. Battery life is moderate, about five hours from a full charge while WiFi etc., is on. Don’t expect more than an hour or two from very heavy-duty processing or gaming work, however. Speaking of gaming, I tried playing a very old game (Halo CE) and it was having trouble rendering it smoothly and consistently. The HD4000 GPU still needs some tweaking to do.
Also, Turbo Boost for both the GPU and CPU weren’t working too well, because there was hardly any thermal headroom left for the auto-overclock to work.
All in all, it’s a good try by the company at an ultrabook, however, I feel the quality doesn’t quite justify the 50k (approx.) price tag. I hope things improve with the Aspire V3 and V5.