Acer Aspire S7 Review: An Exceptional Ultrabook

When Acer first announced the S7 series, a series of touch-screen laptops, it was the company's first touch-screen ultrabook, and was easily the best-made by Acer. The previous S3 and S5 series were a bit boring design wise, while the S7 is made of aluminum with either a metal or Gorilla Glass lid, depending on which model you choose (11 or 13-inch).

The Aspire S7 has a 1080p IPS display, which looked very nice. With in a choice of an Intel Core i5 or an i7 processor and a RAID 0 SSD configuration, and you can easily achieve the fast performance on the S7 series. Does the $1,400 Acer ultrabook get enough things right to justify the starting price?

Made out of smooth glass, sharp edges, and cool aluminum, you can forget Acer's reputation for putting out laptops made of cheap plastic; the S7 is as nice to the touch as it is to look at, and is easily the best designed and tactile laptop the company has ever made. On both 11 and 13-inch models, the keyboard deck is fashioned out of smooth aluminum, with a large trackpad and keys.
                           
Though it looks like the screen of the S7 has a bezel, it's actually an edge-to-edge full glass display, with a border to match the white lid. The model with the white lid is the 13-inch model, and though its white surface can easily pick up fingerprints, it doesn't scratch.

At 2.86 pounds, the 13-inch version of the Aspire S7 weighs even less than the S5, which was also indeed very light for an ultrabook. The 13-inch model is thinner too-- (0.47-inch vs. 0.59-inch), which is an achievement, given that the S5 was once deemed the world's thinnest ultrabook. The Aspire S7 really does feel a lot slimmer and lighter than other competitive 13-inch ultrabooks.On the bottom of the S7, it is sealed in such a way that you cannot easily remove the cover to access the battery and its RAM. (This is normal for ultrabooks). At the bottom is where you will find the speaker strip, which is somewhat unusual, as most laptop speakers are located in the keyboard area or around the edges/sides.

As for ports, the Acer Aspire S7 offers almost everything that you would expect from a typical ultrabook -- 2 USB 3.0 ports, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and an SD reader. You can also get USB-to-Ethernet and micro-HDMI-to-VGA adapters.


Keyboard and Trackpad-
In any case, whatever considerations Acer had when designing its keyboard has finally paid off -- you could easily start typing at a rather brisk speed with very few typos, and when you happened to make a mistake, the largely sized Backspace key was easy to hit. The trackpad does a fine job at handling native Windows 8 gestures, but still isn't as good at single-finger navigation.

Display-
The S7's 1920x1080 HD IPS display is among the most lovely and aesthetic laptop displays, putting some other laptop's display to shame. You would probably think that 1366x768 is sufficient enough for a 13-inch screen, but once you use the S7, its kind of hard to turn back. Everything on the screen looks nice and crisp. Color reproduction is also very nice, blacks are deep, white are bright and colors aren't overly saturated.

The IPS technology displays incredible viewing angles. Unfortunately, you might encounter screen glare, because the S7 has a very glossy screen. The IPS display is also viewable almost edge-on, with the colors still looking potent on off-angles. The screen of the Aspire S7 can be pushed all the way back, so it is laid out completely flat.

Performance and Battery Life-
The Acer Aspire S7 runs on both Intel Core i5 or i7 processor which is plenty fast. The cooling fan, however, makes an annoying and loud fan noise. Like the S5, the S7 has two SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration, which gives it extreme read/write speeds. Acer claims the 4,680 mAh battery can last up to 6 hours, but in battery tests, it only lasted about 4 hours and 20 min.

Software-
Acer is not the only PC maker to do this, but it has definitely filled the S7 with a ton of bloatware. You'll find bloatware like 7digital, eBay, Skitch and Evernote, Acer Explorer, Encyclopedia Britannica, iCookBook, ChaCha, TuneIn, Amazon.com, Amazon Kindle, Netflix, StumbleUpon, newsXpresso, and a trial of McAfee Internet Security Suite. Wow. 
Like most other ultrabooks, the Acer Aspire S7 comes with a 1-year warranty.

Conclusion-
The Aspire S7, it's the best ultrabook Acer has ever released, with a stunning 1080p IPS display and incredible speed. Only one problem, though: Acer needs to improve the battery life. The S7 has a relatively short battery life compared to other touchscreen ultrabooks. If you don't mind carrying a charger wherever you bring the S7, this is one premium laptop. 


Review by © 2012 Andy Chin & Grant Han

© 2012 Acer Inc.