Notebook Hunter

The 13.3in Acer Aspire S3-951-2464G34iss is the Ultrabook to buy if you want to get into the new Ultrabooks category at the lowest cost. It's identical to the next machine up in the S3 line except that it uses an Intel Core i3 instead of a Core i5. It's available for $999, a low price for an entry-level Ultrabook.

Ultrabooks are super-slim, super-light notebooks which have to meet certain rules set by chipmaker Intel. One is that they must incorporate very fast solid state drives. But SSDs are expensive, so Acer has come up with a compromise while still meeting the Intel requirement: it runs a 20GB SSD on which the Aspire S3 stores essential and just-opened programs and adds a slower 320GB mechanical hard drive for general storage. The combination keeps the price down but also allows the lightning-fast resume from sleep demanded of Ultrabooks and provides users with more storage than the other SSD-only Ultrabooks.

As a result of using the Core i3 and mechanical drive, the Aspire S3 is the most affordable of the new Ultrabooks.

The Acer  S3-951-2464G34iss's processor is an Intel Core i3-2367M (1.4GHz), an entry-level CPU that will run basic productivity applications and common activities such as web surfing and email quite nicely but its speed and lack of Turbo Boost mean its not really suited for robust computing, say when you're multi-tasking heaps of programs (Core i5s and Core i7s are better for this).

Although the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics won't run PC games at the highest settings, they're perfectly adequate for just about anything else a laptop is required to do. The 13.3in (1,366x768 resolution) screen is really glossy (which can be annoying if you are trying to use it in lots of sunlight), and while it has rich colour depth the viewing angle could be a bit wider.

At 1.4kg the Acer S3 isn’t the lightest Ultrabook but it’s still easily light enough to carry with you everywhere and let you experience what an Ultrabook is about. It’s also really thin at its thickest point (17.5mm), but has managed to fit in two USB 2.0 ports along with a HDMI port. In our tests on its Core i5 -powered twin, the battery life almost met expectations (Intel has mandated that Ultrabooks should have a minimum of 5 hours of battery life) with 4.5 hours of use every time we used it for solid work over a week of testing in the labs and on trains and buses (word processing, spreadsheets, Photoshop, web surfing). We're assuming the Core i3 version might last even longer, but we have not yet tested this Core i3 variant specifically.

In summary, this is the most affordable of the new Ultrabooks. Aside from its amazingly svelte dimensions, it has a reasonable processor that handles the basic stuff OK, bigger-than-average storage for the category and long battery life. On the downside, the 20GB SSD & 320GB mechanical drive combo sounds better in theory than it really is. On the more powerful Core i5 -powered S3 we found that programs would often take forever to load, the consequence of coming off the 320GB mechanical drive (which spins at a slow 5400RPM), and even though they got faster once transferred to the SSD, this tardyness manifested itself time we fired up a new program. We imagine the Core i3 -powered S3 is not going to be any better.

Overall, the three S3's with mechanical drives are compromise - trying to be both sexy Ultrabooks and affordable ultraportables at the same time. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. The Core-i3 -powered Aspire S3-951-2464G34iss is a good  little laptop for anyone who needs extreme, netbook/tablet like portability, but with performance significantly better than a netbook's. With a 13.3 in screen - which is the minimum screen size required if you're going to make a laptop your primary workhorse - this is an ideal notebook for students because it will last most of the day on a single battery charge and is so light they would barely notice it in their backpacks.