Performance, Battery Life, Heat and Noise
At the heart of every Ultrabook you should find ultra-responsive everyday performance. Fear not, the Aspire S7 is more than up to the task.
Acer has sent us the top-of-the-range Core i7 model to play with, and the third-generation Ivy Bridge processor proves potent in our multi-core Cinebench test.
CPU performance was never in question, and when allied to a pair of SSDs in RAID 0, the Aspire S7 is able to deliver one of the highest PCMark 7 results we've ever seen.
True to Ultrabook form, Acer's machine feels extremely snappy during everyday use. The system is able to cold boot to the Windows 8 desktop in 10 seconds flat, and it resumes from sleep almost instantly. The feeling of responsiveness is of course aided by the RAID 0 storage configuration, which, when benchmarked, revealed staggering maximum read and write speeds of just over 900MB/s.
However, while everyday performance is excellent, don't expect much in terms of graphics power. Using a discrete graphics card isn't an option in a laptop as thin as this, and as expected Intel's integrated HD 4000 IGP offers limited 3D potential. Putting the 3DMark 11 result into perspective, we managed a stuttering 10 frames per second when trying to play Just Cause 2 at 1,366x768. This, clearly, isn't a laptop for intensive games.
Next up, battery life. Our standard rundown test entails looping a 720p movie clip with 50 per cent screen brightness and all wireless radios disabled, timing how long it takes for the laptop to enter hibernation.
Acer's Aspire S7 managed to keep going for almost four-and-a-half hours, which while in keeping with some of the older systems in our chart, isn't stellar by today's Ultrabook standards. We would expect between five and six hours from a well-configured current-generation Ultrabook, and for a premium machine, the Aspire S7 should be offering greater longevity.
Confounding the limited battery life, we also found the laptop particularly slow to recharge. Acer bundles a compact 65W power supply that's easy to carry around, but restoring the battery to 100 per cent can take almost three full hours.
Then there's the issue of noise. Acer uses two fans - one for pulling cool air in, the other put pushing warm air out - and though they keep the Aspire S7 cool at all times, they can become noisy during use. What's annoying is that the noise is inconsistent and as a result very noticeable. The laptop can be perfectly quiet one minute, and then the slightest bit of activity can cause the fans to spin up and create a bothersome whoosh. We appreciate cool laptops, but in this case we'd quite happily trade higher temperatures in favour of lower noise.
