Acer is back with a new Ultrabook – with a Disc drive to boot.
Its first “mainstream” Ultrabook, the 15.6″ Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 is designed for day-to-day use, is skinny at 20.7mm, weighs 2.3kg (better than predecessors) and promises 8 hour of battery life.
But this is an Ultrabook with a difference – the Aspire M3 features an optical disk drive – unlike rival Ultras from the likes of Asus, HP and Toshiba and previous Acer models. And the multimedia centre has Dolby Home Theater v4 sound and “premium” speakers.
The maker also says it raises the Ultrabook bar – being the first with dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT640M graphics for “spectacular image quality and graphics-intensive gaming.”
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But despite the tweak, Acer says it still abides by the Intel ‘ultra responsive’ creed and houses a potent 2nd generation Intel Core processor and its ‘Green Instant-On technology provides fast resume in 1.5 seconds from sleep mode.
The 15.6″ Aspire’s ‘Instant Connect’ tool scans and registers most-visited Internet access points, letting users connect to the web in just 2.5 seconds, four times faster than conventional methods, and boasts a full-size chiclet keyboard.
The 4th generation Timeline series sports two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, one Ethernet, HDMI out and headphone/mic jack, multi-in-one card reader, WiFi and 1.3MP HD webcam.
The Aspire’s cover is made of black aluminum alloy for sturdiness.
Inside, there’s plenty of storage with 500GB Hard Disk Drive, with a hybrid solid state drive.
“We’re pleased to announce our first Ultrabook using discrete graphics. The new Nvidia GeForce GPU is capable of running the latest gaming titles including Battlefield 3 and is perfect for users after a large screen, excellent video editing and gaming performance in a thin and light form factor,” says Aaron Jambrovic, Acer Notebook Manager.
However, Acer haven’t abided by Intel’s other wish – that Ultrabook’s would be under the $1000 price point – and costs $1,399 – but since it comes with a disk drive it probably not bad value.
The Aspire Ultrabook is sold from JB Hi Fi ‘exclusive’ here in OZ while in NZ JB, Noel Leeming, Harvey Norman all stock it.
