The Aspire M5 is covered in a dark aluminum with a brushed metal effect, a lot like the Windows 7 version of the Aspire S7. 0.81 inches may not be mind blowing but just remember that it includes a DVD drive, as well. At 4.4 pounds, it is slightly heavier than the standard weight of Ultrabooks, but it's lighter and a bit thinner than a typical midsize laptop.
For a cheaper price, you get a similar processor, hard drive, and screen resolution, more battery life, and a couple GB more of RAM. In fact, it is indeed far more affordable than the thinner and lighter Acer Aspire S7. The M5 is an excellent all-around computer, even if it doesn't have a dedicated Nvidia graphics card.
The Aspire M5 includes a large multitouch clickpad and chiclet-style keyboard, surrounded by aluminum. The upper lid feels pretty dimunitive, because at first glance you wouldn't have known its screen was a touchscreen until you landed a finger on it. Multi-touch capacitive gestures work very well on the touchscreen, finger contact is slick and precise, as if you were using an iPad. The screen resolution isn't "terrible," it's just not IPS. The quality of the picture, color, and brightness significantly deteriorates at extreme viewing angles. The lid also bends back almost 180 degrees, which allows you to get a more comfortable into a lap-friendly orientation.
The backlit keyboard is also quite comfortable; the keys have good travel and well-spaced, no keys are awkwardly misplaced or shaped. Speakers underneath the Aspire M5 have a decent sound quality so that you can enjoy a movie or stream music in a room. The speakers are decent, but not great.
The Acer Aspire M5 has dual USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, and of course, an Ethernet jack. With that is an SD card slot and headphone jack. There is also a tray-loading DVD drive on the left.
A third-generation Intel-core i5-3317U processor at 1.7 GHz packs quite a bit of power, helping you load and use Windows 8 applications zippy fast. The laptop has a 500GB hard drive, with a 20GB solid-state drive (SSD) cache for the application you use most frequently. And with 6GB of RAM (Random Access Memory), it's 2GB more than the typical-budget 4GB of RAM laptop.
Unfortunately, this laptop does not include Nvidia graphics, although the previous M5 model did. Adding the Nvidia graphics card would have completed the package completely, although the only type of person who would miss it would be a gamer.
The Acer Aspire M5 has an excellent battery life, lasting 6 hours and 2 minutes while playing back videos. Very few laptops in this category of laptops do better than the M5. Acer also includes a standard 1-year warranty.
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