lcd panel acer s3 free sample

The company’s Timeline products have been among the best ultraportables for several years, offering an affordable alternative to those who couldn’t swing a MacBook – or an Asus U series. Acer’s focus on value has not been abandoned here, either, as the S3 retails at just $900, undercutting competitors by at least $100.

That’s not to say it’s better, or even as good. But it’s close. This laptop does not have the unibody design of a MacBook, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference in the laptop’s rigidity and luxury. Picking up the S3 is like picking up a thin, solid piece of metal. It’s hard to imagine there’s enough hollow space inside for a hard drive, processor and RAM.

If there’s anything that lets the S3 down, it’s the lid. Though solid, the hinge mechanism is too loose to properly support the relatively hefty metal surrounding the display. As a result, normal typing can induce some screen wobble, particularly if the surface you’re using is not perfectly solid.

Stranger still, the black material covering the hinge appears to be soft-touch rubber or plastic. Perhaps this supposed to be luxurious, but we would rather Acer used a stiff, exposed metal hinge.

Nitpicks such as these should not be brushed aside, but they reveal how solid the Acer is in general, as there’s nothing else to point to as a flaw or problem. We’re surprised that any Ultrabook is able to come within spitting difference of the Air’s quality. We’re even more surprised that the cheapest Ultrabook on the market is able to do so.

Opening the S3 reveals a standard chiclet keyboard. This is actually a bit unusual for Acer, and as far as we can see, this keyboard design is all-new for the S3. Aesthetically, we would prefer if it used black keys rather than dull silver, but the existing design fits the laptop well enough.

The Aspire S3 offers two USB 2.0 ports and a full-size HDMI port around the back, along with an SD card reader on the right. That’s it. While a MacBook Air is similarly stripped, the Thunderbolt port offers more flexibility than HDMI. More expensive Ultrabooks like the Asus UX31 offer USB 3.0 and mini VGA output, making them more practical in a variety of scenarios.

On offer is a glossy display with a resolution of 1366 x 768. Not all glossy displays are built the same, however, and the one in the S3 appears to be among the most reflective of the breed. When typing in a sunlit room, it was easy to see our own hands on the display — and that was only after we tilted the display down so that we didn’t have to stare at our own mug the entire time.

Despite the lack of any visible speaker, Acer decided to slap this laptop with a Dolby Home Theater badge, which does nothing to improve the meager audio. You can listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos in a quiet room, but music is not pleasing, and moderate background noise can obscure whatever you’re listening to.

At just shy of three pounds, the S3 weighs more on paper than you might expect, but this heft isn’t noticeable when using the device. In fact, the laptop feels exceptionally light, making it easy to carry around in a bag or not.

This, combined with the 13.3-inch display and thickness of less than 0.7 inches at the laptop’s thickest point, makes for a very portable laptop indeed. Any bag that can fit it should be able to accommodate the weight and bulk. Better still, the low power requirements allow Acer to provide a small, lightweight power adapter that is easy to take on long trips.

Our review unit arrived with a number of preinstalled icons, including Netflix, eBay, Acer Games and McAfee Internet Security. Some of these, such as the Netflix icon, are nothing more than links to the service in question.

Standard inside the S3 is the Core i5-2467M, which boasts a base clock speed of 1.6GHz and a Turbo Boost maximum of 2.3 GHz. Intel built this processor specifically for small, light systems that can’t fit larger, hotter variants. When you see part like this, you can be certain it’s going to be slower than a normal version of the same brand, but how much do you sacrifice?

Consumers who are looking for an ultraportable in this range should also consider slightly thicker models, including Acer’s Timeline brand, the Asus U series, and Dell’s Inspiron or XPS 14z. All offer better performance-per-dollar, and have better battery life as well. If you’re hooked on the Ultrabook concept, however, the Acer Aspire S3 is a solid entry that won’t cause excessive harm to your savings account.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN--(Marketwired - Jun 2, 2013) - Acer today announced the launch of the new 13.3" Aspire S3 Ultrabook at Computex Taipei. The S3 has inherited some of the industry-leading design and innovations of the Aspire S7, making it an impressively stylish and productive PC.

"One of the great benefits of successfully launching an ambitious product like the Aspire S7 is what the organization learns at every stage of the process," said David Lee, Senior Architect of Acer Design Center. "We made it a point to reinvest that across our range, and the S3 is a prime example." As on the celebrated Aspire S7, the S3"s patented dual-torque hinge design allows users to easily open the lid up to 180° for sharing content, while keeping the display wobble-free for an outstanding touch experience.

With Acer TwinAir cooling technology, the S3 is always cool to the touch without sacrificing performance. The light-sensing keyboard auto adjusts its brightness to ambient light for better visual comfort in dim settings. In addition, evoking the family design and visual purity of the S7"s gorilla glass cover, the new S3 cover is made from aluminum and sprayed Sparkling White with a mirror-polish finish; the operation area is made from anodized aluminum throughout. Just 17.8 mm thin and weighing only 1.65 kg, this Ultrabook is slim and easy to carry anywhere.

The S3 combines gorgeous design with impressive power. It is equipped with the latest Intel® Core™ processors, which offer up to 15% better performance and up to 2x faster 3D graphics processing speed, with lower power consumption. With the new NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 735M graphics1, users can play videos/movies, edit photos and play games faster than ever before.

The S3 has intuitive features that make it a joy to use. Acer Fast Resume enables the Aspire S3 to resume from Sleep mode in just 1 second, giving it tablet-like responsiveness and waking up 3x faster than a standard Ultrabook. And users no longer need to press the power button as the system will automatically boot up when the display is opened -- even if the computer has been shut down.

When it comes to entertainment, the Acer S3"s 1080p Full HD display renders movies, photos and games with exquisite clarity. The display with IPS technology ensures vivid and accurate color reproduction, with a 170° wide viewing angle that keeps images bright and clear, even when seen from the side. Users can also wirelessly share their favorite digital content on a big screen with better visuals and sound quality via WiDi technology. Plus, with unique Acer Purified.Voice technology, communicating with friends and family sounds crystal clear.

Acer"s S3 is available with a 7.2 mm 1 TB hard disk2 for storage, with the capacity to keep up to 250,000 MP3 songs or 150 FHD videos, and 290,000 8 MP photos -- plenty of room for essential entertainment on the go.

The new Aspire S3 will be available in Q3 2013. For details on availability, product specifications and prices in specific markets, please contact your nearest Acer office or retailer via www.acer.com.

Established in 1976, Acer is an information and communication technology company dedicated to the research, design, marketing, sale and support of innovative products that enhance people"s lives. Acer"s green supply chain delivers environmentally friendly PCs, displays, projectors, servers, tablets and smartphones -- tools our customers need to explore beyond limits and experience more. Ranked No. 3 for notebooks globally (IDC 2012), Acer employs 8,000 people, and 2012 revenues reached US$14.7 billion. Please visit www.acer.com for more information.

© 2013 Acer Inc. All rights reserved. Acer and the Acer logo are registered trademarks of Acer Inc. Other trademarks, registered trademarks, and/or service marks, indicated or otherwise, are the property of their respective owners.

IFA 2011 At IFA in Berlin today, Acer took the wraps off its first Ultrabook, the Aspire S3. At 1.3kg and 13mm thick it falls well within Intel’s 18mm max to claim this slimline performance computing marque.

Also requisite is an Intel Core-i Sandy Bridge ULV CPU, with Acer making claims to be the first to market a Core-i7 model later this month, with plans to produce Core i3 and Core i5 versions from this second-gen chip family.

The underside of the Aspire S3 is vent-free, the magnesium/aluminium alloy body not only keep the thickness down – the 13.3in cell LCD screen is embedded in the lid – but helps disperse heat. It also makes it look a lot like the MacBook Air, but the whole exercise behind the Ultrabook brand is evidently intended to give Apple some competition in this space.

Acer claims a battery life 50 days in its deep sleep mode but for general use the Aspire S3 will clock up seven hours with an SSD and six for the HDD version. The company was keen to show off its Instant On functionality, apparently firing up from sleep in around 1.5secs. However, this didn’t quite go as planned for Campbell Khan Acer President of Global Operations.

Unveiling the Aspire S3 and lifting the lid for a live demo, the assembled hacks gazed upon a black, lifeless screen. After a moment’s hesitation, Khan closed the lid, opened it up again and, hey presto, the S3 fired up in the blink of an eye. Khan later remarked that it was an engineering sample. The real deal will be available in late September with prices ranging from €799 to €1199 and will presumably be much the same in sterling. ®

My old laptop was over five years old in the summer of 2013. While I hadn?t exactly had the need to use a laptop as much as I had to while I was in school, I felt my old laptop was basically a brick. It was heavy, slow, and a pain to lug around with me. I wasn?t particularly in the market for a new laptop, but a local retailer had the Acer Aspire S3-391-6046 on clearance for just above $275. I decided to bite.

The hardware design of the S3 Ultrabook is about a year and a half old as of the writing of this review in July 2013, however it still feels modern, measuring in at about 0.7? thick and weighing a hair under 3 lbs. At first glance, it may be mistaken for a MacBook Air or comparable Utrabook. The lid of the screen is made from brushed aluminum, while the body is silver-colored plastic. Despite the plastic construction, the whole computer feels very solid.

The 4 GB of included DDR3 RAM are not upgradable, and from what I can gather are actually soldered to the motherboard; I wish I could upgraded the memory, but this isn?t going to be my main PC, so 4 GB should be sufficient. As for storage, Acer includes a 300 GB spinning hard drive, which is complimented by a 20 GB SSD. The OS (Windows 8 in this case) is installed to the spinning drive, while the SSD is used for some kind of hibernation cache. Boot times are fast enough for a spinning drive, averaging around 30 seconds, while wake times coming from sleep or hibernation are around 10-15 seconds.

The S3 also includes an MMC/SD card slot, which is annoying shallow and causes cards to stick out about a half inch. In addition to the card slot which sits on the right side of the unit, there are two USB 3.0 ports, a full-size HDMI output, and a power connector on the back. There is a sole headphone/mic jack on the left side.

There is no Ethernet jack on the Ultrabook, but Acer includes both 802.11/b/g/n wireless and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity. Annoyingly, using the default, included WiFi drivers, there is a flaw where the laptop will randomly drop WIFi connection every few minutes while on battery, but after doing a bit of research, it was fixed by an update to the latest WiFi drivers from Acer?s site.

The 13.3? LED-backlit LCD display seemed pretty average; it wasn?t anything special, nor was it bad. Color reproduction is pretty good, but like in a lot of other LED displays, it seems a bit too saturated at times. Horizontal viewing angles are good, but vertical angles suffer unless you?re looking directly at the screen. The 1366x768 resolution and glossy screen are pretty standard for today?s budget laptops.

Battery life ranges from about 4-5 hours, during my normal use, which consists of a lot of web browsing, obviously with WiFi enabled. The default Windows 8 ?Balanced? and ?Power Saver? power options work well, and dim the screen and put the laptop to sleep at appropriate times to conserve battery. While I have not opened the bottom of the S3 yet, from what I can tell, the battery is not easily replaceable, so being close to an outlet may be beneficial. The power brick isn?t too heavy, but still does get very warm while charging.

The touchpad, like the keyboard, feels very sturdy, and is made from one piece of plastic. The bottom half can be clicked for standard right and left click functions. By default, Acer?s touchpad software enables Windows 8 swipe and multitouch gestures. I tried using the touchpad with these enabled, and it was nearly unusable, with random clicks and gestures becoming very annoying, so I quickly turned the gestures off. With the aforementioned gestures turned off, the touchpad is very nice to use, although I?d prefer the physical left and right click buttons being on a different piece of plastic below the touchpad.

The S3?s built-in 720p webcam and microphone are quite sufficient for Skype calls. Microphone levels were good and sound levels are clear. The built-in speakers on the Ultrabook are another story, however. The stereo speakers on the bottom of the laptop are quite small and aren?t very loud, nor do they have much bass. They can be heard from across an average-sized room decently, but add in any background noise, and they can hardly be heard.

Overall, I am very happy with the Acer Aspire S3. It is a very well-built, thin and light Ultrabook. If you can find one with more modern specs, it is well worth it, but even my particular model, with year-old specs is a quite capable machine for most things.

The Acer Aspire line of laptops are a series of personal computers for casual household use by Acer Inc. a Taiwanese multinational electronics and hardware company. They were introduced to the market in 1999 with the Aspire 1151.

Acer Aspire laptops cover a range of tasks from essential function to high performance. They have been compared to other laptops such as Asus’ Transformer Book Flip, VivoBook and Zenbook, Dell"s Inspiron and XPS, HP"s Pavilion, Spectre and Envy, Lenovo"s IdeaPad, Samsung"s Sens and Toshiba"s Satellite.

Acer Aspire laptops have many sub series including the Aspire One, Aspire F series, Aspire M series, Aspire P series, Aspire R series, Aspire S series, Aspire TImeline series (discontinued), Aspire V Nitro series, Aspire V series and Aspire VX series.

CNET wrote about the most recent release in the Acer Aspire lineup, the Acer Aspire 5 (2019). The device sports a 15.6-inch display, is only 3.8 pounds (1.7 kg) and is 0.7 inch thick (18 mm). It is offered at only $350 with an AMD chip and $400 with an Intel processor. Some features that are lacking on this model are an SD card reader, a VGA display output and a DVD drive. According to CNET the Acer Aspire 5 is a budget friendly laptop and has quality internal components but doesn’t have expensive design features like an all-metal chassis for example.

The Asus Zenbook averaged 6 hours of actual usage in our mixed use test. With brightness set to 50% and the Asus power manager set to battery optimized we used the notebook for web browsing over WiFi, editing MS Office documents, processing 14MP images in Photoshop for 30 minutes, and playing streaming video from YouTube and Crackle.com for an hour. That"s just 20 minutes shy of our 13" MacBook Air and considerably better than the Acer Aspire S3. It"s not quite as good as the 11.6" Acer TimeLineX 1830T that clocked almost 7 hours.