Acer unveils its first Ultrabook, the Aspire S3 by VR-Zone.com
It turns out the
leaked pictures of Acer's Ultrabook turned out to be the real deal after all, as the company has unveiled its Aspire S3 series of Ultrabooks at IFA in Berlin today. The press release makes bold claims of 1.5 second resume times (from sleep) and up to 50-days battery life (this time in deep sleep mode), something that will be interesting to see if Acer can really deliver on.
Ace is still being coy with regards to some aspects of the specifications of the Aspire S3 and there are a few blanks in the press release. However, what we do know is that as with all the other Ultrabooks, Acer will be using Intel's ULV Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. In the storage department we're looking at a 320 or 500GB hard drive, or a 240GB SSD options. It's worth noting that Acer has implemented what it calls Green Instant On which is some kind of SSD caching technology but we're not sure if this is Intel's Smart Response technology or a different solution like the one used by Samsung in its Series 7 notebooks.
Other features will include a 13.3-inch 1366x768 display, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, a single headset jack and sadly what appears to be a pair of USB 2.0 ports. Less noticeable features include a 1.3 Megapixel webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0+HSR. The notebook itself is a mere 13mm thick and weighs in at 1.4kg. It has a similar chiclet keyboard to that found on the current TimeLineX series of notebooks from Acer, but it has a much larger touchpad.
Acer claims up to 7h battery life, but this is for the SSD equipped model, so expect that to be less on the hard drive models. It's a shame that Acer couldn't have made a thinner screen bezel, similar to that seen on Samsung's Series 7, as in as much as the Aspire S3 being a thin and light notebook, the thick screen bezel kind of ruin things a bit.
The Aspire S3 will start shipping in selected regions this month, with broader availability in October. It seems like Acer didn't manage to hit Intel's sub US$1,000 price point with the Aspire S3 as the most basic model which we expect to have a Core i3 CPU and a 320GB hard drive will retail at €799 (S$1,375/US$1,140) while the top of the range SSD equipped Core i7 model is expected to retail at S$2,060 / US$1,710 / PHP 72,100.
Acer unveils its first Ultrabook, the Aspire S3
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