Hands on: Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook
Acer unveils its take on Intel's new Ultrabook specification, promises it will be the first to market
The keyboard isn’t backlit, but the Chiclet-style keys all felt firm and there was minimal flex from the tray. There’s a large touchpad that has no physical buttons: you press in the entire pad to register a click. It felt fairly responsive during our brief time with the S3, but time will tell if it can match the ease of use of the MacBook Air, its main competitor.
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Like most of the ultrabooks we’ve seen so far, connectivity on the S3 is rather sparse. An HDMI port, two USB ports, an audio combi-jack and a multi-format card reader are all you get, although Wireless N, Bluetooth 4.0 and Acer’s own Clear-Fi DLNA streaming are all supported. Naturally for a laptop of this size, there’s no optical drive, so you’ll need an external one to play DVDs or install disc-based software.
The Aspire S3 is expected to go on sale at the end of September, making Acer the first manufacturer to make its Ultrabook available to the public. UK prices are yet to be confirmed, but Acer will be recommending retailers sell them for between €799 and €1,199 (UK will be the same amount in pounds, it’s expected) depending on specification. It’s difficult to say whether the option of a hard disk will be enough to set the S3 apart from the inevitable deluge of Ultrabooks we’ll see in the run up to Christmas, but we came away from our first look rather impressed.
Be sure to check back soon, as we’ll be bringing you a more in-depth review as soon as we get our hands on a final model