GADGET PART 7: ACER ASPIRE S3 ULTRABOOK VS APPLE MACBOOK AIR

Acer Aspire S3 and Apple’s MacBook Air,

The Acer Aspire S3 is by far the cheapest ultrabook at the moment and, even though it cuts a few corners in terms of hardware and performance, is a solid and snappy overall piece of computer equipment.However, Acer S3 is not a real competitor for Apple’s MacBook Air, a laptop that is better than Acer’s ultrabook in pretty much all aspects.Lets take a look at the complete head-to-head comparison between the Acer Aspire S3 and the MacBook Air.

DESIGN and BUILD

Acer S3 come with a solid aluminum-magnesium body, the reality is a bit different. The Aspire S3 has a plastic chassis after all, which is only brushed in aluminum, making it look pretty strong and reliable, but not actually firm at all. Besides, the MacBook Air is far more elegant, stylish and also solid, featuring a body made out of a single piece of aluminum. As for the product dimensions, the S3 is almost identical to the 13-inch MacBook air, being exactly as thin and just 0.02 pounds heavier.

KEYBOARD and TOUCHPAD

Unfortunately for Acer, the keyboard and touchpad is yet another chapter where the S3 clearly falls short of the MacBook Air. Acer’s keyboard, while not being extremely poor when talking about comfort and accuracy, is made out of plastic and is a bit stiff. The S3’s touchpad is responsive and accurate enough. In addition, the Air’s glass trackpad at s3’s, which is a bit larger, far more comfortable, as well as extremely solid and reliable.

SCREEN, HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE

The Aspire S3 sports a pretty standard 13.3-inch LED-backlit display with 1366 x 768 pixels resolution, which is once again decent, but far from great. If you want greatness, on the other hand, the Air comes with a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display with 1440 x 900-pixel resolution, capable of very nice viewing angles, as well as bright colors and excellent contrast.In terms of hardware, the S3 features a pretty snappy 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, as well as 4 GB of RAM and an integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics card. The MacBook Air comes with the same graphics card, identical memory, but with a slightly faster 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5 chipset. The Air also comes with a state-of-the-art 128 GB solid state drive, while the S3 only features a 20 GB SSD, as well as a 320 GB SATA Hard Drive. In other words, the Air will have much better booting speeds, a stronger battery, but will also come with a better overall gaming, browsing and multimedia experience.

BATTERY LIFE, CONNECTIVITY and PORTS

The Acer Aspire S3 was only able to go for a little over four hours before being plugged in, while the MacBook Air lasted a full hour and twenty minutes more. The different between S3 and Mac Air is, S3 went for three hours and a half between charges, while the Air went for over six hours. In terms of connectivity and ports, things are pretty on-par between the two ultrabooks, both featuring WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, two USB 2.0 connectors, as well as an SD card reader. The S3 also comes with an HDMI port, while Apple’s Air features a Thunderbolt connector.

COCLUSION

For me, as a student the best choice among this two type of laptop is, I prefer you to buy Acer Aspire S3 as it provide you more facilities and the price of Acer laptop is much cheaper proportionate the MacBook Air. Even though Apple laptop is much better but, the price of this laptop is expensive.