Products cantankerous my desk-bound regularly. Some are nifty, some aren't, and most are in between. It's a perk, to be sure, merely review products aren't often made for me. On a case-by-example basis, the products I'm looking are oft aimed at unlike market segments than my ain. That isn't the example with Acer'southward Aspire S7.

The touchable, classy ultrabook is targeted right at the road-warrior, power-hungry, super-user. The S7 is an expensive machine. The starting price hovers nigh $1400, but our Core i7 configured spec clocks in at $1650. For the toll customers do encounter a tiptop spec canvas and a beautifully designed body. I know what you're thinking. The S7 had better be astonishing for that kind of coin. Don't worry, with a few qualifiers, the Aspire S7 easily ranks among the summit Windows 8 machines. Is that enough to justify the price?

Hardware

Fashioned from aluminum and Gorilla Glass the S7'southward thin profile makes a great first impression. The deck and lid are completely rigid. There is zero flex in the laptops frame. It's very reassuring considering how light (two.29 lb) the auto is. The hat is framed with brushed aluminum that is soft and absurd to the touch. That frame is filled with white glass that isn't near as fingerprint prone as I expected.

The aforementioned goes for the (more than important) drinking glass on the other side of the lid. I suspect that Acer applied an oleophobic blanket to the glass surfaces on the motorcar. That oleophobic coating sparks a trend that follows through the construction of the rest of the laptop. On a laptop with a touchscreen, fingerprints are guaranteed to be a pain. That coating eases the user's hurting, preventing all but the greasiest of fingers from greasing up the screen. Thoughtful pattern, and smart touches like these litter the Aspire S7.

Acer Aspire S7 - $one,650

  • xiii.3" 1920x1080 LED backlit multi-touch display
  • Intel Core i7-3517U (1.ix - 3.0GHz)
  • Intel Hd Graphics 4000
  • 4GB of DDR3 RAM
  • 256GB SSD
  • SD/MMC card reader
  • two USB 3.0, HDMI, sound jack
  • 802.11b/k/north, Bluetooth 4.0
  • 1.3-megapixel webcam
  • Chiclet keyboard
  • Multi-gesture touchpad with integrated buttons
  • 4-cell Li-Polymer battery (4680mAh)
  • 12.73 x 8.79 x 0.47 inches, 2.86 pounds

Consider some other abiding problem with the first wave of touch-enabled laptops: The hinges simply aren't designed to stand upwardly to poking and prodding. It leads to awkward ergonomic situations where the left hand is property the screen in place while the right is slicing fruit in Fruit Ninja. Acer's machine corrects this error The swivel is remarkably stiff, and becomes even more than strong at the normal viewing angle. This addition makes the touchscreen role infinitely more comfortable and applied.

There's a trade-off at that place though, the strengthened swivel makes the S7 a scrap more hard to open than I'd like. To compensate, the entirety of the lid has a slight indentation on the rim. It'due south perfect for sliding a finger under, and while the laptop still isn't the easiest to open, smart blueprint makes a singled-out design trade-off less of a...well, trade-off.

The S7's cooling solution is some other of my favorite design decisions. Every external fan is situated on the rear of the laptop. Because of this, the S7 will never blow hot air over your hands. Information technology's smart, user-facing design.

These qualities, when combined with the S7'due south gorgeous frame make a compelling argument. Across that, the hardware pattern, fifty-fifty with a few small quibbles is the S7's best quality.

Easily-On

Actually using the S7 is more of a mixed bag. Some things, like the tiny ability supply and charging port are great, other things, like the placement of the power push button are non. The power button is on the left side of the deck and is very easily pressed. More in one case, when moving the laptop while in-utilise (the power button is inactive while the lid is closed) my palm found the button and turned the machine off by blow. It seems that the power push moved every bit a concession to making a clean deck for the S7.

It wasn't a smart phone call, but that is the exception rather than the rule.

Moving to the deck, the keyboard is wonderful to bear on. The keys are soft, responsive and have great travel, and not just for an ultrabook. At that place is a quirk to the keyboard. There's no function row. Instead, keys like the number row end up with triple functionality under Acer's five-row arrangement. It's not the biggest loss in the world, only keep in mind there will exist a learning curve to the deeper functionality of the S7's keyboard.

The Elan manufactured trackpad is not very good. The 1-push canvass of aluminum is, like the rest of the laptop, pleasing to the touch, but it simply doesn't work well for some tasks. Two-finger scrolling works extremely well in the Metro Start Screen, but can be jerky on spider web pages. Pinch-to-zoom is as wonky on Windows as it has ever been. Unfortunately, the Elan device stumbles on basic tasks every bit well. Finger tracking is solid, simply borer the pad to click works about sixty% of the time, a tragically low proportion. Really clicking the trackpad works, but this is hardly my commencement selection for interacting.

The touchscreen is superlative. It is responsive in every example and works exactly as you expect and want it to. Curiously, I found myself using it much more than than I expected in the traditional desktop segments of Windows 8.