With the deluge of Windows 8 tablets, convertibles, and touchscreen desktops on the horizon, you might think the world's forgotten all about the regular old laptop. But Acer hasn't. Persisting with its ultrathin Aspire S line, the company has brought the Aspire S7 to IFA 2012 and my first encounter with it has been nothing short of a revelation. The S7 is slim to the extreme yet still has a rigid build thanks to a mix of aluminum and magnesium construction. It also includes the requisite capacitive touchscreen to make the most of Windows 8, but most importantly, it's the prettiest laptop I've come across since first laying eyes on Apple's 2010 MacBook Air redesign.
To appreciate how much of a departure from normality this is for Acer, you have to go back to last year's IFA. That's when Acer's W4 Windows Phone handset ended up on the receiving end of the most withering assessment Paul Miller has ever delivered on The Verge. To go, in the span of one year, from producing drably generic mass market junk to a cutting-edge design is, in my judgment, a great leap in the right direction for Acer. The Aspire S7 looks like something you'd expect the ultra-talented design minds at Nokia or Apple to produce, not the usually budget-minded crew from Taiwan. Of course, the S7 isn't quite perfect, as I found it rather unwieldy to open due to the rather stiff hinge (usually a good thing) and weirdly cut incision at the front of its top lid for opening. Beyond that and the slightly tepid 1366 x 768 resolution, the 11-inch Aspire S7 is close to an ideal ultraportable.
I've never cared much for Intel's ultrabook branding, which has grown increasingly diluted and expanded with ever larger and less portable machines. The Aspire S7, however, is an ultrabook. Kudos, Acer. In the midst of a maelstrom of novelty that's liable to make even the most jaded journalist a little starry-eyed, your understated aesthetic and sharp design language have whispered rather than screamed, but they haven't gone unheeded.
Update: Good news! Acer has gotten in touch to say that the Aspire S7 I played with was a prototype unit and that the final retail laptop will offer a full 1920 x 1080 HD resolution. So now it's even harder to find any glaring faults with it.
Comments
This is probably the most elegant looking laptop that I’ve seen in a while.
By Richard Gilboy on 08.30.12 8:04am
B-but Acer!
I’m really torn over this. Perhaps Acer have improved?
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 8:15am
I doubt it
By AwwwYeah on 08.30.12 8:27am
It isn’t a plasticy POS that’s barely being held together.
So they have improved in that department, now lets see how many heat related design flaws this thing has.
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 8:29am
compared to my POS Aspire One 753 that I have to use for school, (normally on an 11.6" Air at home and all other times) this looks very, very, very nice.
By hamish on 08.30.12 9:35am
Acer = overheating.
By regiobaden on 08.30.12 8:29am
There’s round about a 99% chance they forgot to include some kind of cooling for the motherboard chipset.
Dis gon b gud.
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 8:30am
Old laptops overheated because the Northbridge, which housed the IGP, was either connected via a thin heat pipe or no pipe at all. Considering these laptops have no motherboard IGP, overheating will no longer be a problem (in this area, anyway), and I doubt the PCI lanes will overheat.
By Tj00139 on 08.30.12 8:34am
My acer laptop has a discrete graphics chip and the southbridge makes the palmrest nice and toasty. So much so the IDE controller blew out.
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 9:05am
Eh, nothing perfect.
By Tj00139 on 08.30.12 9:14am
Kinda, but no. The northbridge would overheat because they did not have the temp relation when it cam to the fan or system overheating!, so the fan would only ever come on if the CPU was heating up and would cause the northbridge to overheat and unsolderer its self especially if the fan turned completely off (like in most old hp’s).
It did not help that they used thermo-conductive rubber pads that would loose elasticity and become loose between the northbridge and the heat pipe. So on top of all this you also had small veins on the heatpipe that where very pushed together so they very easily collected dust within a year and pushed almost no air threw. So it was not just one thing or two… it was three things that they had to mess up to have all these computers fail.
My ASUS ul30vt-a1 (Joshua Topolsky Laptop of the year for 2010) has two of the three problems i have said. And i fixed one by removing the foam rubber pad and with some copper shims and ceramic thermal grease made it run much much cooler and the fan rarely is audible.
By NeatOman on 08.30.12 4:17pm
You’re joking right?
By theverge2 on 08.30.12 11:34am
Overheating and dead battery within 5 months
By AwwwYeah on 08.30.12 11:11pm
Have you heard of a 12 month warranty ?
By fourthletter on 08.31.12 6:58am
I have an awful experience with my constantly-resetting-after-1-year 12" Acer laptop, and also the latest round of review on Acer’s ultraportables are always centered around overheating to the point of becoming unusable and unstable.
They need to improve durability on the components inside their laptops, but there’s no way to tell if it’s improved without at least 6-months of intensive usage.
By Jornada on 08.31.12 12:02am
Acer were never actually bad at making laptops. Its just that they make the cheapest devices on the market, which had… consequences.
A good laptop they make: TimelineX
By Tj00139 on 08.30.12 8:31am
I liked the TimelineX . . . until I tried using that bendy keyboard
By Good_ole_Pinocchio on 08.30.12 8:48am
I paid £600 for my Aspire back in 2006. I’ve been watching the thing slowly disintegrate for years, it doesn’t even leave the house either. It sits on my desk for whenever I want to leave downloads going overnight.
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 9:10am
It really comes down to what type you get from Acer.
By Tj00139 on 08.30.12 9:14am
Do laptops serve any other purpose?
By Batdroid on 08.30.12 11:02am
Porn?
By Daws001 on 08.30.12 2:30pm
Likewise, Except I had to change its mobo about 2 years after I bought it, luckily it came with 3 years standard warranty and everytime I put my hands on the wrist rest I can feel the plastic bend and the keyboard bends with every keypress. The cooling system works ok… for about 3-4 months, at which point dust hinders airflow enough that it overheats.
At least it’s very easy to clean thoroughly, My GFs HP laptop has overheating problems but you need to take almost the whole laptop apart just to get to the heatsink, considering it uses flimsy plastic clips and parts it’s almost impossible to take it apart without risk of breaking something somewhere, and it’s just not worth the effort…
By Nicktrance on 08.30.12 12:57pm
Let me guess, she has a HP DV6?
They are notorious.
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 1:47pm
I don’t thing most laptops leave the house after 6-7 years of use..
By lachlan.mcleod on 08.30.12 2:31pm
Oh please, If I had an IBM luggable I’d carry that thing with me everywhere!
By chrishind10 on 08.30.12 3:06pm