In an interesting twist, back in March when NVIDIA was unveiling their new Kepler GPUs, Acer started shipping their Timeline Ultra M3 Ultrabook before the Kepler NDA expired. While everyone else was apparently busy trying to get their Ivy Bridge laptops and Ultrabooks ready, Acer decided to beat them to the punch by releasing a Sandy Bridge Ultrabook with NVIDIA’s latest and greatest mobile GPU, the GT 640M. The biggest problem for those interested in the TimelineU M3 was that it was primarily for Asian markets and never showed up at the major US retailers.

Three months later, Acer is back with the expected Ivy Bridge upgrades, and this time we should see widespread availability in North America (and presumably in the rest of the world as well, though model numbers are likely to vary somewhat). Here’s the rundown of the three initial Timeline Ultra M5 models slated for the US.

Canada will also be getting three (different) models, which we’ve listed below:

I have to admit that Acer’s decisions on what to ship in the various regions of the world has always baffled me. Canada gets a couple options with pure solid state storage, but the three US models are hybrid solutions. The 15.6” Canadian 581TG-9825 model also comes with a GeForce GT 640M instead of the lesser GT 640M LE. Finally, where the US gets a cheap model with an older Sandy Bridge i3-2377M processor, all of the Canada models are running Ivy Bridge. Of course, pricing for the Canada models is also higher, and in the case of the SSD-only laptops it’s a substantial bump. All of the above laptops are scheduled to start shipping in late June.

Looking at the core features, most of the changes relative to the M3 we looked at earlier this year appear to come from the CPU and chipset upgrade. USB 3.0 ports are now present, but otherwise everything is pretty tame. It’s not clear if the memory is really only DDR3-1066 or if the spec sheets Acer sent out are incorrect, but it wouldn’t be the first time an OEM has skimped on memory speeds to save a few dollars (or pennies). The LCDs are also bog standard 1366x768 panels, which we love as much as most of our readers (which is to say, not at all, particularly on 15.6” displays). For the hybrid storage, it’s also worth noting that if Acer is doing the same thing as in previous Ultrabooks, the 20GB SSDs are used purely to accelerate the hibernate/resume feature and they’re not actually a full SSD cache with Intel’s Smart Response Technology.

While there are lots of things we can complain about with the overall design and hardware choices (and we did just that with our Acer Timeline Ultra M3 review), ultimately Acer’s US models are designed to hit some of the lowest price points ever for Ultrabooks. The fact that you can now get an i5 Ivy Bridge Ultrabook with discrete graphics for only $830 is pretty impressive, considering last generation Ultrabooks that sold for $850 typically had Core i3 processors and no discrete graphics (which is what Acer is now selling for $680). If you’ve liked the idea of an Ultrabook but still wanted something that could handle moderate gaming, the new additions ought to be right up your alley.