Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook Review

New look
The Acer Aspire S3 has been about in several guises to get a few years now, however the 2014 edition is rather a departure from the old models. Where the original Aspire S3 was quite rightly regarded as a little of a MacBook Air rip-off in its appears, the new version looks quite a bit closer to the Acer Aspire S7, an Ultrabook having a snazzy glass lid.vgp ac10v10 adapter for vaio So as to maintain charges down, the Acer Aspire S3's lid isn't made of glass, but it nevertheless appears and feels as if it can be. The aluminium frame is lacquered with numerous layers of glossy paint, providing a appear pretty in contrast to the metal underneath. The rest of your Acer Aspire S3 design and style is sound, if not rather as pristine and ideal because the very priciest, prettiest UltrabooksSamsung ad 4014B. The prevalence of apparent seams and also the slightly uneven distribution on the chunky screen bezel mean it isn't as quite as a MacBook Air. But then handful of laptops are.

Design
It really is quite clear that each Ultrabook maker is gunning for the MacBook Air, plus the Aspire S3 is no exception. On the other hand, Acer had to make some sacrifices to help keep its cost low--no duralumin or unibody styles here. pa3917u 1aca The lid in the S3 is usually a brushed aluminum, however the underside and deck are made of a silver-colored plastic, and it is created to look like a unibody style although it is not. The black hinge area at the rear accommodates the S3's ports too as an air vent. Four rubber pads on the bottom also maintain the S3 from sliding around on a desk.At just 0.51-0.6 inches thick, hp pavilion 14 b178sa charger is a shade thicker than the 13-inch MacBook Air, which tapers from 0.11 to 0.68 inches. Weighing three pounds even, the S3 is also on a par with Apple's ultraportable. This technique easily slipped into a compact messenger bag and was barely noticeable as we rode home on the subway.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The island-style keyboard on the S3 is not the worst we've ever used, however it samsung 535u3c battery was a bit stiff ; keys were big and well spaced (together with the exception from the arrow keys, which have been a discomfort), but we would have preferred slightly more travel and responsiveness. On more than one particular occasion, the keyboard missed our inputs when we have been typing at a quick pace, and we had to produce a conscious effort to press harder.acer iconia w510 w511 charger The 3.4 x two.5-inch Elan clickpad wasn't as big as the one on the MacBook Air, however it was large and responsive sufficient for us to execute multitouch gestures for example pinch-to-zoom. We like that Elan added a four-finger swipe that automatically minimizes all windows to reveal the desktop. The click action on the bottom on the pad was just a little mushy, although, msi laptop power adapter gt70 and people who use two hands could discover that it sticks.

Display and sound
The S3's 13.3-inch display has 1366 x 768 resolution, that is popular for laptops this size. Actually, the Portege Z830 and IdeaPad U300s will tap out with all the exact same pixel count. Nevertheless, toshiba battery pa5013u 1brs the 13-inch Air sports a 1400 x 900 panel, though the UX31 actions as much as 1600 x 900 resolution. When we had been employing just one particular system at complete screen, the S3's low-res panel was more than adequate for reading documents and scrolling through net pages, but we felt the squeeze keenly when we used Windows 7's Snap function to view two pages side by side.For what it is worth, high-def videos looked lots crisp on that display, and we enjoyed decent viewing angles from the sides as soon as we dimmed the lights. lenovo ideapad miix 10 tablet power cord We did not have as significantly luck head-on, although; even when we dipped the display forward slightly, the picture appeared washed out. Not great news when the particular person sitting in front of you on the plane decides to lean all of the way back.And how's the sound, you ask? Not bad -- according to the kind of music you are into. Pop songs, such as Lady Gaga's "The Edge of Glory" sounded more or less as we'd anticipate them to, though the system's limitations became clear when rap tracks like "Hypnotize" took on a distinctly metallic good quality.

Performance
Inside the Aspire S3 can be a second-gen 1.6-GHz Intel Core i5-2467M Processor, 4GB of RAM, and also a 320GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive, which powered the technique to a PCMark Vantage score of five,489. That's an excellent 500 points above the category typical, but the MacBook Air we reviewed, which includes a 1.7-GHz Core i5 processor and 128GB SSD, notched a far greater 11,230 when we ran precisely the same test in Boot Camp. We saw comparable results with Geekbench: power cord for kodak esp office 6150 The Aspire S3 scored three,538, which, once more, is 500 points higher than the ultraportable notebook average (three,062), but second towards the MacBook Air (5,860). Still, the S3 is more than speedy enough to play films, form in Google Docs, and listen to music.Sadly, the mechanical really hard drive wasn't the fastest in the enterprise: It took 3 minutes and 35 seconds to duplicate a four.97GB folder of multimedia. That is a rate of 23.7 MBps, that is far beneath the category average of 37 MBps.It took the Aspire S3 eight minutes and 3 seconds to carry out 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 final results that weren't great, but weren't unexpected either. On 3DMark06, the S3 scored 3,257, which can be about 400 points above the typical and 1,000 points greater than the Samsung Series 9 (2,188) asus t100 power adapter but 1,000 points under the MacBook Air (four,236).When playing Planet of Warcraft, the S3 averaged 26 frames per second with the display at its native resolution and effects set to Very good; that is slightly more than half the category average of 43 fps. When we maxed out the settings, the S3's frame prices dropped to just 11 fps, that is only six fps below typical, but still fairly unplayable. The MacBook Air managed 28 fps at these identical settings.

Battery life
Battery life is a lot more important than ever on Ultrabooks, apple cinema display power adapter as the integrated batteries are either not user replaceable or very difficult to replace at best. Right here the Aspire S3 doesn't hold up too badly, managing five hours and 20 minutes away from a socket. However, even contemplating the Core i7 CPU beneath its hood it's far from greatest of class, together with the Samsung Series 9 900X3A providing you more than seven hours. We'll must see how other Ultrabooks hold up, but we're guessing the S3 surely won't rule the roost in relation to time around the go.