RAID 0 SSDs in an Ultrabook just doesn't make any sense. A single SATA 6Gbps SSD is more than capable of pushing the bottleneck to the CPU under most workloads. Two SSDs just add cost, consume more power and eat up PCB area that could be used for a larger battery for instance.
Highly disagreed. I find the Acer Aspire Switch 12 (2014 model) highly compelling as a current owner, especially in its heavily-discounted state. Core M and an active digitizer for $500?
I bought a V Nitro Black Edition a little less than a year ago and it was the best laptop purchase ive made in 15 years. I absolutely love it. I have another friend who bought the same laptop after seeing mine who is a PHD student doing research in genetics. He took the laptop and had the processor pegged at 100% for quite literally 3 weeks straight crunching numbers and it had no problems, not a single crash, nothing.
I bought a V15 (non-black edition since I wanted a ULV with better battery life) and I am also absolutely happy with it. Happens that I also do my PhD in genomics - I could probably leave the laptop running for years without getting far though. I'm using HPC clusters with >2000 CPUs and terabytes of RAM. whatever your friend is telling you, a consumer computer won't be able to do any real PhD-grade genomics ;)
Don't listen these kids here.. They talking bulshit here and in reality they has nithing in own.. some crappy old dusty desktop which barely runs games.. runing on 1024x768 resol.
Generally Acer laptops has sucked for quite a few years, but their tablet and 2-in-1 has been quite good so far, the Aspire Switch is probably the most impressive so far.
That's just pointless? Why bother with the risk of RAID 0 anything that you are not using purely just for sh*ts and giggles? Rather just have a plain 250GB SSD partition. I would assume you can flatten it and install in a more sensible manner?
This is a completely ignorant statement. Remember all the SSD issues esp. with OCZ in a few years back? Just because SSDs are more mechanically durable, doesn't mean they won't fail for some other reason.
Copy over an aldready slow wifi/ethernet? Copy to another SSD using USB 3.0? SSD's RAID 0 makes no sense unless you have a workstation/high end PC for heavy video editing.
If you have an SSD Raid 0 you'll only see the speed copying to another SSD Raid 0 o m.2 pci-e SSD.
It's an ultrabook, any kind of speed you get is already bottlenecked by the ultrabook itself (slow external connectivity.
It's an ultrabook, not a mobile workstation. If you plan on doing a lot of video work an ultrabook is a wrong choice in the first place due to the limited processing power.
u naive stupid kiddo troll.. if u don't know nothing bout computers stop embarrassing yourself if u have no idea how to simply unRAID two storage drives then go back to school mento
You're partly right. The S7 uses a proprietary double-sided mSATA SSD (Kingston P/N SMS"R"...) which has an identical footprint to a regular mSATA SSD. It's basically two 64/128GB SSDs in a software RAID on the same physical PCB. Fortunately, the mSATA slot can work with traditional mSATA cards if you want to get more capacity or ditch the weird RAID setup.
why doesn't make sense what a stupid pathetic epic fail pist you had.. what is so all sudden bad on raid? but if crapple woud have it you will go.. woow best thing what apple did.. am i right.. funny boy?
Indeed. Serious question. Why on earth would I pay $1389 for this vs. $1169 for an HP Spectre x360? It has the same CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB mSATA SSD. It also has a bigger battery 56Wh. The i5 Spectre with the same RAM/SSD at $999 makes the pricing on this seem even more absurd. It's not like the Acer brand can command a premium. Spectre X360 or XPS 13 over this all day long.
nnn this is so PRETTY. I think this is the most beautiful ultrabook on the market. Like the model that rules the runway. Ativ Book 9 comes close but this thing is flawless.
Good review, Brett. I especially liked your detailed coverage of the keyboard. Please continue to review keyboards in depth! I feel that as ultrabooks get thinner and smaller, one of the first things being compromised is the keyboard layout. As a power user (Eclipse, Excel, VS, etc.), I cannot fathom the exclusion of dedicated function, Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys. This is why I love ThinkPad keyboards... if only a Surface- or Dell XPS-like device could have dedicated buttons...
New WIN 10 devices announcing tomorrow. Maybe the rumored larger Surface Pro will have a better keyboard. The type cover is decent but I'm hoping they improve on it and yeah add dedicated keys like you suggest.
They've already got all those dedicated keys. Microsoft threw me for a loop with their key layout, but I've realized it's better than the other ways. I can easily hit the Fn key with my right hand while also using the arrow keys for Home, End, etc.
About the only thing I'd change is to add a right-control key. And move the arrows down a bit so you could make them all the same height without making them too short.
I realize your needs are unique compared to mine, but I would hardly call the Surface keyboard a power-user tool. As a programmer, I want dedicated function keys first and multimedia keys second... not a huge deal since I can engage the function lock. However, I would hardly call reaching out for the function key for Home and End user-friendly (for programmers at least). Beyond that, it does no good when you actually have function keys as the secondary input for these keys. Case in point, try power-debugging and using the immediate window in VS on a surface keyboard in your lap :).
The keyboard on the original S7 was terrible. I don't believe I could type more than one short word before it would either miss a letter or double-enter a letter. It required twice as much work to type on as any other keyboard I've used, which made it essentially unusable for what I needed (report writing).
Other than that, it has been an excellent device. The screen is great, it has remained quick and responsive, and is easy to carry around. The hinge has lost none of its rigidity either. If they could only fix the keyboard, it would be perfect.
While "perfect" is probably an understatement, it was quite good, except the keyboard. I make no exaggeration when I say that it was not possible to type much more than a short word without having to make a correction. People were modifying registry files in an attempt to compensate (by changing the latency between detected key presses)
I'm a bit surprised that Acer would want you to review a Broadwell model now when Skylake is out. Was this laptop stuck in your todo queue for a while?
That's true for desktop processors. On the mobile side, improvements to power management and a bigger IGP have potential to make significant improvements to some performance numbers.
Those specs at that price would be OK back in 2012. But now? At $799 it could sell a few. At $999? Meh, no thanks. At the asking price? You gotta be completely crazy.
"Something pretty remarkable is that Acer has sampled us nearly identical Aspire S7 models for the past three generations"
I would have gotten excited here since I wanted a good comparison between Haswell and Broadwell in terms of efficiency. But I'm not sure if even this is a good comparison since you're not using the same browser for battery life tests. Edge is the most efficient browser on Windows.
It would have been nice if you also posted battery tests using IE for this particular product since you have identical specs other than the CPU.
On to the product itself, dat screen is seriously awful... The price tag is a bit high. Otherwise, not too shabby.
I can understand picking an Acer 2 or 3 years ago but now Dell presents a much more compelling choice if you're looking for Windows premium sub-notebook. Is there a reason to pick this over the XPS 13?
Not surprised by the crappy display. My budget S3-391 ultrabook has one of the worst displays I've seen, though obviously good enough for what I use it for--word processing, pdf viewing, and web browsing. I wish it was easy to test battery longevity. My Acer's battery ended up at 33% of its capacity after just under two years. I've since dropped in a new battery, but who knows how long it'll last. Also surprised by noise, since my machine howls during even light activity. Then again, I paid a fraction of what the S7 costs, but it's not instilled much confidence in me as regards Acer products.
I actually have one of the earlier models of these, its not a bad ultrabook but the keyboard is fing horrid. I also have a Samsung ATIV book and its keyboard is worlds better then the on on the acer
I bought the 392, and the things that annoyed me the most when I bought it are things like the keyboard, but also that the power cable connects to the laptop very flimsily and at times can just fall out. I am very happy with the performance, and I never expected it to be a powerful machine given that it weighs so little, but the things that make me think I should have bought a different Ultrabook are things that can't easily be measured.
OK. I've been using one for about a year now. I have the i7 with the 2560x1440 display. Simply a brilliant piece of equipment.
Unlike some of you, I have no preference for a particular brand. But I needed a sturdy reliable machine as I am on the road most of the time for business. Hence, the price was also not a decisive factor. In the past I have used laptops from Samsung, Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo, Apple. All of them had issues sooner or later. Therefore, I do not believe that any particular brand will guarantee a trouble free laptop future. I'm sure I'll have some issues with Acer too, eventually. But so far so good and boy, I do like this machine, a lot.
At the time I looked at the HP Spectre . Promising, but sold out pretty much everywhere. Didn't like the rubber surface on the Dell XPS, gets stained after a while. Didn't like the hinges on the Lenovo Yoga 3, looks like a weak point. Not enthusiastic about the Macbook Pro 13 inch either, especially the rough edges. And I need a Windows machine, for business purposes, not a Macbook running Parallels desktop or similar. Looked at the Acer, couldn't figure out why they chose a SSD raid config either. But I did like the look and feel of the machine, and most specs were on par with the other machines.
Ended up buying the Acer, and I must say I am impressed. Build quality is excellent, sturdy aluminium top, gorilla glass cover. Heck, you can even use it as a whiteboard. In business meetings, everyone wants to know what type of laptop it is, and checks how thin/light it is.
I use it almost every day and it is 100% silent most of the time, only at full load the fan spins up, but never gets really noisy. The 2560x1440 display is simply gorgeous. Everyone loves it. No problems with scaling of fonts or apps using Windows 8.1 or 10 (never tried Windows 8).
I have no problem with the flimsy powerplug. In fact, I think it's an advantage that it easily unplug from the laptop when someone trips over the power cord. But obviously, Apple's solution is even better.
The keyboard is fine. Spacing is ok and I can type really fast without any problems. I would prefer separate function keys, though. The silver color of the keys does not bother me one bit. The only minor niggle I have is that the keyboard backlight makes a slight whining noise at maximum brightness. Throttle down a bit and it's gone.
I don't understand the issue the reviewer has with *only* two USB ports. I use a Logitech Ultrathin T630 bluetooth mouse, which doesn't need a USB port anyway. Occasionally I use a USB stick. That leaves at least one spare USB port.
The reviewer states also that the displayport and the mini HDMI port could have been combined. Whereas that may be true, the simple fact remains that in business environments, most projectors/beamers either have an HDMI or VGA connector. DisplayPort is still pretty scarce although I do use it at home. HDMI works 100% of the time. VGA uses a dongle which is not always compatible with old plasma screens, so I found out: the laptop freezes until you unplug it from the screen.
Finally, the battery lasts about 6-7 hours, depending on what it is I'm doing (mostly office apps and webbrowsing). For business use that is excellent. In fact, I can usually use it for several days without charging. My previous $1500 Samsung notebook lasted only 3 hours or so.
All in all, I am extremely happy with this machine and I would definitely buy it again.
Hi, I also bought the Acer S7-392. The looks are amazing but that is subjective. What is not subjective is how good the 2560x1440 screen is; the battery time; how thin and light it is. It's now August 2016 and I bought this pc (where I'm typing) long time ago... don't really know 2 years or 3 ago? The gorilla glass cover is great, no scratches, no stains, nothing. It still as nice as when bought. Same for the screen itself. The keyboard: I also feel the lack of the dedicated Function key row, but other than that, it's great and the best compared to other ultrthin I know (asus and lenovo). I also don't understand the complaints on the SSD raid 0. Either I'm ignorant or you are... this provides me with aprox 1GB/s transfer rate. Specially when moving movies around from SSD to 1gbps network or to a fast USB3.0 external disk. As far as a I know, only Sony Vaio had something similar (4xraid0 or someting). It's as ran windows 7.. which I loved, then upgraded to 8.1 which was so-so, and now finally Windows 10 which is a great OS (and I'm a strong linux supporter mind you, for servers). I reached to this article just because what I really wanted is to know if there was a newer version to buy, with more memory or more disk. I'm an intensive business pro user with virtualization running Linux, and lots of Office and all day long email and stuff... So you see. It's a light, slim, hardcore machine. I actually think that Acer has a bad trackrecord and must have created this S7 at this price to try to change it's image. It's unfair people look this laptop down without even testing it. My previous machine was a ibm thinkpad and toshibas before that. Oh well I just hope they keep making money from this line so they keep developing it.
Hi, I also bought the Acer S7-392. The looks are amazing but that is subjective. What is not subjective is how good the 2560x1440 screen is; the battery time; how thin and light it is. It's now August 2016 and I bought this pc (where I'm typing) long time ago... don't really know 2 years or 3 ago? The gorilla glass cover is great, no scratches, no stains, nothing. It still as nice as when bought. Same for the screen itself. The keyboard: I also feel the lack of the dedicated Function key row, but other than that, it's great and the best compared to other ultrthin I know (asus and lenovo). I also don't understand the complaints on the SSD raid 0. Either I'm ignorant or you are... this provides me with aprox 1GB/s transfer rate. Specially when moving movies around from SSD to 1gbps network or to a fast USB3.0 external disk. As far as a I know, only Sony Vaio had something similar (4xraid0 or someting). It's as ran windows 7.. which I loved, then upgraded to 8.1 which was so-so, and now finally Windows 10 which is a great OS (and I'm a strong linux supporter mind you, for servers). I reached to this article just because what I really wanted is to know if there was a newer version to buy, with more memory or more disk. I'm an intensive business pro user with virtualization running Linux, and lots of Office and all day long email and stuff... So you see. It's a light, slim, hardcore machine. I actually think that Acer has a bad trackrecord and must have created this S7 at this price to try to change it's image. It's unfair people look this laptop down without even testing it. My previous machine was a ibm thinkpad and toshibas before that. Oh well I just hope they keep making money from this line so they keep developing it.
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Kristian Vättö - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
RAID 0 SSDs in an Ultrabook just doesn't make any sense. A single SATA 6Gbps SSD is more than capable of pushing the bottleneck to the CPU under most workloads. Two SSDs just add cost, consume more power and eat up PCB area that could be used for a larger battery for instance.zepi - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Not to mention of M.2 PCI-e SSD's if manufacturer wants to offer more performance.LoganPowell - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link
It's a lot of money to drop on Acer Aspire... in my opinion. When there are much more price-worthy options on the market /Billie from http://www.consumerrunner.com/top-10-best-desktops...retrospooty - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
You lost me at "Acer". Nothing they do makes sense. Nothing they make makes me want to buy.lmcd - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Highly disagreed. I find the Acer Aspire Switch 12 (2014 model) highly compelling as a current owner, especially in its heavily-discounted state. Core M and an active digitizer for $500?Samus - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
That's $500. I'd consider an Acer in the $300-$500 ballpark, but not $1300.retrospooty - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Wait till it dies on youEthos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
bunch of usa moaners..on purpose trolling on acer..
Kutark - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I bought a V Nitro Black Edition a little less than a year ago and it was the best laptop purchase ive made in 15 years. I absolutely love it. I have another friend who bought the same laptop after seeing mine who is a PHD student doing research in genetics. He took the laptop and had the processor pegged at 100% for quite literally 3 weeks straight crunching numbers and it had no problems, not a single crash, nothing.rxzlmn - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I bought a V15 (non-black edition since I wanted a ULV with better battery life) and I am also absolutely happy with it. Happens that I also do my PhD in genomics - I could probably leave the laptop running for years without getting far though. I'm using HPC clusters with >2000 CPUs and terabytes of RAM. whatever your friend is telling you, a consumer computer won't be able to do any real PhD-grade genomics ;)rxzlmn - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
edit: meant cores, not CPUs, obviously ;)Ethos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Don't listen these kids here..They talking bulshit here and in reality they has nithing in own.. some crappy old dusty desktop which barely runs games.. runing on 1024x768 resol.
Teknobug - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Generally Acer laptops has sucked for quite a few years, but their tablet and 2-in-1 has been quite good so far, the Aspire Switch is probably the most impressive so far.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
acer started be great in 2010-2011Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
you three above u are proper weirdos :D your comments are just for laugh... i bet u all 3 are from usa ..:DDDHiTechObsessed - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Having owner an Aspire S5, they don't actually do RAID in the normal sense. They have a single SSD, partitioned to 2, and software RAID.jabber - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
That's just pointless? Why bother with the risk of RAID 0 anything that you are not using purely just for sh*ts and giggles? Rather just have a plain 250GB SSD partition. I would assume you can flatten it and install in a more sensible manner?Flunk - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Of course you can reparation the drives.Morawka - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
really no risk with SSD RAID 0. HDD yes, but not SSDShadow7037932 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
This is a completely ignorant statement. Remember all the SSD issues esp. with OCZ in a few years back? Just because SSDs are more mechanically durable, doesn't mean they won't fail for some other reason.Samus - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I just had a Mushkin PCIe SSD fail entirely because one of the four 128GB SSD's failed.RAID 0 is inherently unreliable because you are increasing the failure points.
Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
u such stupid whinner ..who don't thinkEthos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
you stupid idiot you can turn raid off if you don't want it and you can carry on using your '' plain" diskWhat a bunch of retards here really
Teknobug - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
lol RAID 0 on the same drive? What theMorawka - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
i disagree, your getting double the write and double the read speed. Copying large files (movies, ISO's, etc..) will see great benefit.it's a stop gap solution because it does'nt have PCIE SSD
Lolimaster - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Copy to what?Copy over an aldready slow wifi/ethernet? Copy to another SSD using USB 3.0? SSD's RAID 0 makes no sense unless you have a workstation/high end PC for heavy video editing.
If you have an SSD Raid 0 you'll only see the speed copying to another SSD Raid 0 o m.2 pci-e SSD.
It's an ultrabook, any kind of speed you get is already bottlenecked by the ultrabook itself (slow external connectivity.
Morawka - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
copy to the same drive. ie: duplicating filesConverting MKV's, Ripping Blu Ray, 1080P Video Scratch Disk, Adobe Bridge Scratch Disk, 4K Video Scratch Disk and Copying.
There are tons of uses
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
It's an ultrabook, not a mobile workstation. If you plan on doing a lot of video work an ultrabook is a wrong choice in the first place due to the limited processing power.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
u naive stupid kiddo troll.. if u don't know nothing bout computers stop embarrassing yourselfif u have no idea how to simply unRAID two storage drives then go back to school mento
Athlex - Thursday, November 12, 2015 - link
You're partly right. The S7 uses a proprietary double-sided mSATA SSD (Kingston P/N SMS"R"...) which has an identical footprint to a regular mSATA SSD. It's basically two 64/128GB SSDs in a software RAID on the same physical PCB. Fortunately, the mSATA slot can work with traditional mSATA cards if you want to get more capacity or ditch the weird RAID setup.Ethos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
why doesn't make sense what a stupid pathetic epic fail pist you had..what is so all sudden bad on raid?
but if crapple woud have it you will go..
woow best thing what apple did.. am i right.. funny boy?
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
wow what a rip off. I look forward to seeing this one in the bargain bin for $800 in a few months. No way is it worth $1400.Bob Todd - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Indeed. Serious question. Why on earth would I pay $1389 for this vs. $1169 for an HP Spectre x360? It has the same CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB mSATA SSD. It also has a bigger battery 56Wh. The i5 Spectre with the same RAM/SSD at $999 makes the pricing on this seem even more absurd. It's not like the Acer brand can command a premium. Spectre X360 or XPS 13 over this all day long.nathanddrews - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
*ahem*Gorilla Glass top coating!!!!!1!
kspirit - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
nnn this is so PRETTY. I think this is the most beautiful ultrabook on the market. Like the model that rules the runway. Ativ Book 9 comes close but this thing is flawless.Oyster - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Good review, Brett. I especially liked your detailed coverage of the keyboard. Please continue to review keyboards in depth! I feel that as ultrabooks get thinner and smaller, one of the first things being compromised is the keyboard layout. As a power user (Eclipse, Excel, VS, etc.), I cannot fathom the exclusion of dedicated function, Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys. This is why I love ThinkPad keyboards... if only a Surface- or Dell XPS-like device could have dedicated buttons...Manch - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
New WIN 10 devices announcing tomorrow. Maybe the rumored larger Surface Pro will have a better keyboard. The type cover is decent but I'm hoping they improve on it and yeah add dedicated keys like you suggest.mkozakewich - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
They've already got all those dedicated keys. Microsoft threw me for a loop with their key layout, but I've realized it's better than the other ways. I can easily hit the Fn key with my right hand while also using the arrow keys for Home, End, etc.About the only thing I'd change is to add a right-control key. And move the arrows down a bit so you could make them all the same height without making them too short.
Oyster - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I realize your needs are unique compared to mine, but I would hardly call the Surface keyboard a power-user tool. As a programmer, I want dedicated function keys first and multimedia keys second... not a huge deal since I can engage the function lock. However, I would hardly call reaching out for the function key for Home and End user-friendly (for programmers at least). Beyond that, it does no good when you actually have function keys as the secondary input for these keys. Case in point, try power-debugging and using the immediate window in VS on a surface keyboard in your lap :).cgalyon - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
The keyboard on the original S7 was terrible. I don't believe I could type more than one short word before it would either miss a letter or double-enter a letter. It required twice as much work to type on as any other keyboard I've used, which made it essentially unusable for what I needed (report writing).Other than that, it has been an excellent device. The screen is great, it has remained quick and responsive, and is easy to carry around. The hinge has lost none of its rigidity either. If they could only fix the keyboard, it would be perfect.
smorebuds - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
the hyperbole is strong with this onecgalyon - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
While "perfect" is probably an understatement, it was quite good, except the keyboard. I make no exaggeration when I say that it was not possible to type much more than a short word without having to make a correction. People were modifying registry files in an attempt to compensate (by changing the latency between detected key presses)DanNeely - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I'm a bit surprised that Acer would want you to review a Broadwell model now when Skylake is out. Was this laptop stuck in your todo queue for a while?lmcd - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Most of Skylake is a connectivity upgrade, no? Which would be lost on a unit like this, with nearly no connectivity to speak of.DanNeely - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
That's true for desktop processors. On the mobile side, improvements to power management and a bigger IGP have potential to make significant improvements to some performance numbers.lilmoe - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Acer probably got a better deal for those parts...p1esk - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Those specs at that price would be OK back in 2012. But now? At $799 it could sell a few. At $999? Meh, no thanks. At the asking price? You gotta be completely crazy.kmmatney - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I'm pretty sure Intel is charging up the nose for the Intel Core i7-5500U - easily adds a few hundred to the price over an i5.solipsism - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
May I request when detailing the USB ports going forward to make clear if it's USB-A or USB-C.lilmoe - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
"Something pretty remarkable is that Acer has sampled us nearly identical Aspire S7 models for the past three generations"I would have gotten excited here since I wanted a good comparison between Haswell and Broadwell in terms of efficiency. But I'm not sure if even this is a good comparison since you're not using the same browser for battery life tests. Edge is the most efficient browser on Windows.
It would have been nice if you also posted battery tests using IE for this particular product since you have identical specs other than the CPU.
On to the product itself, dat screen is seriously awful... The price tag is a bit high. Otherwise, not too shabby.
webby7 - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
Any chance of a HP Spectre x360 review? That along with the XPS 13 seem to be the ultrabooks to beat.MykeM - Monday, October 5, 2015 - link
I can understand picking an Acer 2 or 3 years ago but now Dell presents a much more compelling choice if you're looking for Windows premium sub-notebook. Is there a reason to pick this over the XPS 13?Michael Bay - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
XPS has been reviewed to death already.Ethos Evoss - Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - link
anandatech woke up just now thojohnny_boy - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not surprised by the crappy display. My budget S3-391 ultrabook has one of the worst displays I've seen, though obviously good enough for what I use it for--word processing, pdf viewing, and web browsing. I wish it was easy to test battery longevity. My Acer's battery ended up at 33% of its capacity after just under two years. I've since dropped in a new battery, but who knows how long it'll last. Also surprised by noise, since my machine howls during even light activity. Then again, I paid a fraction of what the S7 costs, but it's not instilled much confidence in me as regards Acer products.sharath.naik - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Not sure if its only me but that silver keys on a silver body annoys me to no end.sibuna - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link
I actually have one of the earlier models of these, its not a bad ultrabook but the keyboard is fing horrid. I also have a Samsung ATIV book and its keyboard is worlds better then the on on the acerflyingpants - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link
Cool. Why isn't the keyboard as large as the new Macbook?Mr. Pedantic - Tuesday, October 27, 2015 - link
I bought the 392, and the things that annoyed me the most when I bought it are things like the keyboard, but also that the power cable connects to the laptop very flimsily and at times can just fall out. I am very happy with the performance, and I never expected it to be a powerful machine given that it weighs so little, but the things that make me think I should have bought a different Ultrabook are things that can't easily be measured.Ethos Evoss - Tuesday, December 15, 2015 - link
Best looking ultrabook on the planetSietse Vliegen - Monday, February 8, 2016 - link
OK. I've been using one for about a year now. I have the i7 with the 2560x1440 display. Simply a brilliant piece of equipment.Unlike some of you, I have no preference for a particular brand. But I needed a sturdy reliable machine as I am on the road most of the time for business. Hence, the price was also not a decisive factor. In the past I have used laptops from Samsung, Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo, Apple. All of them had issues sooner or later. Therefore, I do not believe that any particular brand will guarantee a trouble free laptop future. I'm sure I'll have some issues with Acer too, eventually. But so far so good and boy, I do like this machine, a lot.
At the time I looked at the HP Spectre . Promising, but sold out pretty much everywhere. Didn't like the rubber surface on the Dell XPS, gets stained after a while. Didn't like the hinges on the Lenovo Yoga 3, looks like a weak point. Not enthusiastic about the Macbook Pro 13 inch either, especially the rough edges. And I need a Windows machine, for business purposes, not a Macbook running Parallels desktop or similar. Looked at the Acer, couldn't figure out why they chose a SSD raid config either. But I did like the look and feel of the machine, and most specs were on par with the other machines.
Ended up buying the Acer, and I must say I am impressed. Build quality is excellent, sturdy aluminium top, gorilla glass cover. Heck, you can even use it as a whiteboard. In business meetings, everyone wants to know what type of laptop it is, and checks how thin/light it is.
I use it almost every day and it is 100% silent most of the time, only at full load the fan spins up, but never gets really noisy. The 2560x1440 display is simply gorgeous. Everyone loves it. No problems with scaling of fonts or apps using Windows 8.1 or 10 (never tried Windows 8).
I have no problem with the flimsy powerplug. In fact, I think it's an advantage that it easily unplug from the laptop when someone trips over the power cord. But obviously, Apple's solution is even better.
The keyboard is fine. Spacing is ok and I can type really fast without any problems. I would prefer separate function keys, though. The silver color of the keys does not bother me one bit. The only minor niggle I have is that the keyboard backlight makes a slight whining noise at maximum brightness. Throttle down a bit and it's gone.
I don't understand the issue the reviewer has with *only* two USB ports. I use a Logitech Ultrathin T630 bluetooth mouse, which doesn't need a USB port anyway. Occasionally I use a USB stick. That leaves at least one spare USB port.
The reviewer states also that the displayport and the mini HDMI port could have been combined. Whereas that may be true, the simple fact remains that in business environments, most projectors/beamers either have an HDMI or VGA connector. DisplayPort is still pretty scarce although I do use it at home. HDMI works 100% of the time. VGA uses a dongle which is not always compatible with old plasma screens, so I found out: the laptop freezes until you unplug it from the screen.
Finally, the battery lasts about 6-7 hours, depending on what it is I'm doing (mostly office apps and webbrowsing). For business use that is excellent. In fact, I can usually use it for several days without charging. My previous $1500 Samsung notebook lasted only 3 hours or so.
All in all, I am extremely happy with this machine and I would definitely buy it again.
maccomb - Saturday, August 20, 2016 - link
Hi,I also bought the Acer S7-392. The looks are amazing but that is subjective.
What is not subjective is how good the 2560x1440 screen is; the battery time; how thin and light it is. It's now August 2016 and I bought this pc (where I'm typing) long time ago... don't really know 2 years or 3 ago? The gorilla glass cover is great, no scratches, no stains, nothing. It still as nice as when bought. Same for the screen itself. The keyboard: I also feel the lack of the dedicated Function key row, but other than that, it's great and the best compared to other ultrthin I know (asus and lenovo). I also don't understand the complaints on the SSD raid 0. Either I'm ignorant or you are... this provides me with aprox 1GB/s transfer rate. Specially when moving movies around from SSD to 1gbps network or to a fast USB3.0 external disk. As far as a I know, only Sony Vaio had something similar (4xraid0 or someting). It's as ran windows 7.. which I loved, then upgraded to 8.1 which was so-so, and now finally Windows 10 which is a great OS (and I'm a strong linux supporter mind you, for servers).
I reached to this article just because what I really wanted is to know if there was a newer version to buy, with more memory or more disk. I'm an intensive business pro user with virtualization running Linux, and lots of Office and all day long email and stuff... So you see. It's a light, slim, hardcore machine. I actually think that Acer has a bad trackrecord and must have created this S7 at this price to try to change it's image. It's unfair people look this laptop down without even testing it. My previous machine was a ibm thinkpad and toshibas before that. Oh well I just hope they keep making money from this line so they keep developing it.
maccomb - Saturday, August 20, 2016 - link
Hi,I also bought the Acer S7-392. The looks are amazing but that is subjective.
What is not subjective is how good the 2560x1440 screen is; the battery time; how thin and light it is. It's now August 2016 and I bought this pc (where I'm typing) long time ago... don't really know 2 years or 3 ago? The gorilla glass cover is great, no scratches, no stains, nothing. It still as nice as when bought. Same for the screen itself. The keyboard: I also feel the lack of the dedicated Function key row, but other than that, it's great and the best compared to other ultrthin I know (asus and lenovo). I also don't understand the complaints on the SSD raid 0. Either I'm ignorant or you are... this provides me with aprox 1GB/s transfer rate. Specially when moving movies around from SSD to 1gbps network or to a fast USB3.0 external disk. As far as a I know, only Sony Vaio had something similar (4xraid0 or someting). It's as ran windows 7.. which I loved, then upgraded to 8.1 which was so-so, and now finally Windows 10 which is a great OS (and I'm a strong linux supporter mind you, for servers).
I reached to this article just because what I really wanted is to know if there was a newer version to buy, with more memory or more disk. I'm an intensive business pro user with virtualization running Linux, and lots of Office and all day long email and stuff... So you see. It's a light, slim, hardcore machine. I actually think that Acer has a bad trackrecord and must have created this S7 at this price to try to change it's image. It's unfair people look this laptop down without even testing it. My previous machine was a ibm thinkpad and toshibas before that. Oh well I just hope they keep making money from this line so they keep developing it.