Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 review

Ultrabooks are the new wave of high performance notebooks that don’t compromise on portability. With respectable hardware, a lightweight frame and an enticing price tag, could the Acer Aspire M3 Timeline live up to the Ultrabook hype?
Design and build quality
The M3 manages to look the part of an Ultrabook, sporting a slim and lightweight design. At just 20.7mm thick and a not-too-hefty 2.25kg, it manages to be pleasantly portable despite housing a 15.6 inch display.
The casing is plastic with a matte finish; it doesn’t have an expensive look or feel but it manages to dress the part despite the somewhat cheap materials. Fortunately, the device is sturdy, with nothing awkwardly buckling in places it shouldn’t when pressure is applied.
Status lights are situated nearly underneath the machine at the bottom, just serving to indicate when the M3 is charging or switched on.
All the ports are found along the rear of the laptop; 3 USB inputs (one of which is USB 3), an HDMI port and an Ethernet port, as well as the power input. Putting all of this on the back looks neat, but functionally it’s annoying and you’ll be yearning for a couple of USB ports along the side.
Along the left you’ll find the DVD drive and a standard 2-in-1 card reader, along the right, maddeningly, you’ll find nothing but a lock port. Along the top Acer boasts their “Professionally Tuned” Dolby Home Theatre sound.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The touchpad was fine, but not great. It’s a plastic click-pad that includes features such as two-finger vertical scrolling, pinch-to-zoom and a four-fingered Show Desktop swipe. These worked most of the time, but sometimes required a few attempts which made you not want to bother.
Single-finger operations worked fine, but I had some issues with the left-click not working correctly, requiring a very firm press to register.
Due to the slim design the keys are a bit shallow, but nevertheless managed a good tactile feel. Acer have provided a lot of space between keys, making it a pretty easy board to type on. The downside to this is some of the keys have been shrunk to accommodate the extra space, such as the Tab, Shift and F-keys. This takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s not a major issue. Acer has also made space for a numpad, which is nice.
Hardware
The Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 has a wide variety of options – at the top end you’re looking at a Core i7, an SSD, and a gaming-ready Nvidia GT640M.
The unit under review however, is a more sensible Core i3 option, with a 320GB Hybrid SSD/HDD and the standard Intel HD3000 graphics. The hybrid drive is the most interesting feature; it’s essentially a standard drive with a small SSD partition to allow for fast boot times and critical data access. It’s also an inexpensive way of hanging on to your “Ultrabook” status.
The machine does come with 4GB of DDR3 at 1333MHz, which makes this a pleasure for everyday use.
Aside from that it has all the usual bells and whistles you’d expect to see, such as a 1.3 megapixel webcam along the top and built-in microphone. These are both fine for Skype and video chat, but those hoping for a YouTube music career may need to upgrade.
Connectivity is offered via 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.0 and Gigabit Ethernet.
But what of the “Professionally Tuned” Dolby audio? Honestly, they didn’t sound that much better than most laptop speakers. They’re quite decent for laptop audio, but don’t let the marketing fool you into thinking they’re anything particularly special.
Display
This is probably one of the weakest aspects of the device. Acer have chosen a glossy finish for the screen, and for a 15.6-inch display the chosen resolution of 1366 x 768 is a little disappointing. It’s not ugly, but cutting costs in the display always feels like a mistake. The colours looked alright, but if you’re a stickler for smooth pixels that resolution is going to frustrate you.
The vertical viewing angles weren’t very good; tilt the screen too far forward or back and you’ll instantly notice a big difference. This is particularly puzzling since viewing angles from the side are exceptional; you can be looking at it from an extremely acute angle and still get a clear picture.
Performance and Battery Life
Hardcore gamers will have to look elsewhere thanks to the HD3000 GPU, but less graphically-intensive games on medium-low settings will still run at a decent frame rate.
However, the solid processor and healthy amount of RAM make this a really good option for a non-gamer; browsing, media consumption, word processing. and e-mail are all handled smoothly and quickly.
The Hybrid drive performed really well in a boot test – from powering on to desktop took me 17 seconds. Resuming from sleep was also very impressive; it felt almost instant.
The 3-cell battery performed quite well, managing nearly 6 hours on a looping video with the Wi-Fi on and the screen brightness at 65 percent. With general use you can bump that up closer to 7 hours, which is quite a respectable offering from Acer.
Conclusion
While this may stretch the definition of an Ultrabook just a little, the Hybrid drive, great performance and sleek and lightweight design make this an excellent work or travel option.
At an RRP of R7,999 you are paying a slight premium for that fast boot time and Ultrabook status, but if you want something with decent hardware in a portable frame that isn’t going to break the bank, this is a solid choice.
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