Design

Like all ultrabooks, the Aspire S5 is designed to take up as little space in your rucksack as possible. To that end it weighs a mere 1.35kg and measures 15mm at its thickest point.
You’ll appreciate that reduced size and weight if you’re dragging the S5 around all day. This is a gadget to take a close look at if you travel a lot.

With most ultrabooks boasting extremely similar specs, the design and build quality is probably the most important thing for these little laptops to get right. We’re pleased to report the S5 looks initially promising in this regard.

Components
Expect Intel’s Core iSeries processors to be lurking inside, which should make the S5 powerful enough to handle multi-tasking without breaking a sweat.

Storage comes courtesy of an SSD drive, which is faster than a traditional mechanical hard drive, and less likely to break should you drop your laptop. Handy.
Battery life
Acer reckons the S5 will offer several weeks of battery life, but we suspect you’ll only get longevity that good if you use it extremely rarely.

That said, ultrabooks we’ve seen so far have offered reasonably good battery life, so this machine could see you through a whole day’s computing. We’ll know more when we get the S5 in for review, at which point we’ll force it through our gamut of battery benchmark tests.

Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook Features & Technical Specifications:

• Operating System: Window 7
• 13.3? Inches HD LED Backlit Display Screen
• Intel Second Generation/Intel Third Generation Ivy Bridge CPU Processor
• Up to 8GB DDR3 RAM
• SSD Storage
• Webcam: HD Camera with Built-in Microphone
• Card Reader: Multi Card Reader
• Audio: Dolby Home Theater Audio
• Keyboard: Chiclet Keyboard
• Pointing Device: Touchpad
• Ports: USB2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, RJ-45, HDMI, Microphone in, Headphone out
• Wireless 802.11 b/g/n
• Integrated Gigabit LAN
• Bluetooth v3.0
• Up to 10 hours battery life
• Thickness : 15mm
• Weight: 1.35 kg
• Warranty: 1 year