Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 review

The 320GB hard disk (of which 282GB is available to the user after the recovery partition has taken its share) provides a decent amount of space to install software and create projects, but you’ll probably need external storage if you have a large media collection. At the rear of the laptop are one USB3 and two USB2 ports alongside an HDMI output and the usual Gigabit Ethernet port. The M3 also has a 2.4GHz band 802.11n Wi-Fi adaptor, but no Bluetooth support. We’d have liked a few more USB ports, but it’s great to see USB3 support on a laptop in this price range.

The 15.6in display has a resolution of 1,366×768. It feels a little cramped if you’re used to larger resolutions, but it’s appropriate for the screen size. The display is bright and accurately coloured, although some of the pale grey shades in our test images appeared a uniform white. We found its reflective finish a little distracting when viewing dark screens in a brightly lit room. The integrated speakers are surprisingly loud for an ultra-portable and even have a hint of bass, but they did sound a bit tinny and higher frequencies distorted at volumes of around 80% and above.

The Aspire Timeline M3 is a great laptop if your computing ambitions don’t require too much raw power. It’s sturdy, looks great, has a massive battery life and although we aren’t fans of the keyboard, it’s comfortable once you become familiar with it. For £480, there are other laptops that provide more power, but if portability and a long battery life are a priority, it’s ideal. If computing power’s a priority, the Acer Aspire V3-571 is a Best Buy winner and it has a 2.5GHz Core i5 processor.