Ultrabooks have always historically been compared to the MacBook Air.

This shouldn’t be too surprising, considering that these notebooks are designed as competitors for Apple’s famous portable notebook, where its slim design helped to inspire the template for many Ultrabooks to follow.

Since the first MacBook Air’s release in 2008, these “MacBook Air clones” (as some tech websites called them back in 2012) have gone a long way, with ultrabooks like the the Dell XPS13 and Asus Zenbook UX305UA establishing their own identities and providing equally versatile and often cheaper alternatives to the MacBook Air.

The Acer Aspire S13 is another unique entry into the Ultrabook market. Launched in Indonesia in August, it follows up on its Acer S7 predecessor’s tradition of being one of the thinnest ultrabooks ever made with an almost equally thin product that delivers a solid user experience and performance, all while looking stylish to boot.

A review copy of the S13 was provided to J+ by Acer Indonesia. Here are our thoughts on the product.

First impressions

Upon unboxing, the first thing one notices is the stylish look of the Aspire S13. Its black lid has unique nano-imprinted groove textures that are easy on the eyes, feels good to the touch and doesn’t cause sweat stains or accumulates fingerprints. Its gunmetal spine provides a good contrast to the dark colors of the rest of the laptop.

Opening up the laptop reveals an aluminum deck with brush metal textures. Unfortunately, unlike the lid, touching the wrist resting area and places around it very easily leaves finger prints. It needed heavy rubbing to get rid of these prints. Thankfully, the keys on the keyboard aren’t as susceptible to marks, so no fingerprints left there.

Of note is the attention to detail given to the look of the touchpad. Both it and the deck are surrounded by shiny diamond-cut edges that give the product an extra premium look.

The only real problem, aside from the sensitivity to fingerprints on the interior, is the rather awkwardly thick bezel. Otherwise, the laptop leaves a great first impression.

The feel

The unit itself is very light, weighing in at only 1.42 kilograms. Thanks to this and its 14.5 millimeters of thickness, it is a snug fit into my backpack. The adapter itself is appropriately small and doesn’t take up much bag space.

It turned on almost immediately. When activated, the backlit keyboard features turn on automatically. Throughout my review period, I found this to be a useful feature, as it allowed just enough blue light for me to help see where my fingers are at while typing in a dark bus in the middle of the night. It was bright enough to see, but not too flashy that it hurts the eyes.

The keys themselves, though decently tactile, were a bit on the small side. Having Pg Up and Pg Down right above the left and right navigation buttons in particular was hard to get used to. I often found myself accidentally hitting Pg Up or Pg Down while attempting to inch an article up or down.

The Home and End keys were also combined with the Pg Up and Pg Down keys. It required the pressing of the Function key to activate and felt rather cumbersome, though I’m sure it would be easy to adjust to with time.

Screen and sound

When turned on, the Aspire S13’s 13.3-inch full HD 1920x1080 IPS display provided solid colors. I found that the matte surface on the display was a design choice that was very useful for usage in bright environments when outside. The colors stayed strong despite my viewing angle. My friends reported no problems watching the same YouTube videos I was watching while they stood next to me.

They also reported no problems hearing what came out of the speakers, despite the fact that its speakers were located on the bottom-end of the laptop. The Dolby sound was loud, rich and clear enough for a small gathering of people around the S13.

Software

The laptop came with the standard Windows 10 Home. A trial version of Office 365 was already installed, so I was able to get some work done with it during my review time without needing to download extra software. I did not like the intrusive nature of software like McAfee constantly popping up and asking me to subscribe, but pre-packaged software of this sort is par for the course, so no major complaints there. Nothing that a quick uninstall can’t fix.

Performance

The laptop is powered by a sixth generation Intel processor and gives you 256GB to 513GB of SSD storage options alongside 4GB to 8GB of RAM, depending on your preference and price range.

This processor, space and memory was more than enough for me to go about the activities that dominated my time with the laptop: working, browsing and watching YouTube.

And I was able to do quite a bit of this. I managed to get myself about 6-7 hours of steady multimedia work on a daily basis throughout the review period while occasionally watching multiple tabs worth of videos in full HD and screen brightness, all without any noticeable slowdown or lag in performance. The laptop stayed cool and quiet most of the time, though it can get warm when on my lap.

The touchpad was responsive for work use, though as a long-time mouse enthusiast, I still found myself clearing one side so that I could plug in my Logitech B100.

Ports and models

The S13 comes with a full HDMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, headphone jack and an SD card reader. It also more notably comes with a USB 3.1 Type C port. I appreciate the fact that the ports were divided equally on both on the left and right side of the laptop. It meant that I never had to worry about cable clutter.

The model comes available in black and white. As mentioned earlier, users also have the option to upgrade the storage and RAM to fit their needs. The standard i5 Core version is priced at Rp 12.99 million, while a pricier i7 Core variant is also available at Rp 17.99 million.

Verdict

I had a good time with this laptop. Its inner and outer features make it a device I’d recommend to office goers in need of a reliable mobile work station that will allow them the versatility, performance and battery life they need to go about their day-to-day work. It looks beautiful and makes for an impressively eye-catching device to carry around in business meetings. You won’t be doing heavy-end gaming with it, which isn’t its fault, as it wasn’t designed for that, but you can do just about anything else you want to with a laptop of this caliber.

SPECS

Processor Intel® Core™ i5-6200U processor (3MB L3 cache, up to 2.8 GHz) / Intel® Core™ i7-6500U processor (4MB L3 cache, up to 3.1 GHz) OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Storage 256GB SSD / 512GB SSD Memory 4GB DDR3L / 8GB DDR3L Graphic Intel® HD Graphics 520 Connection WiFi 802.11ac/a/b/g/n + Bluetooth® 4.0

Battery Capacity 4,030 mAh / up to 11 hours Display 13.3” IPS Full HD (1920x1080) Dimension 327 (W) x 228 (D) x 14.58 (H) mm Weight 1.42 kg Camera Webcam

Port 2x USB 3.0; 1x USB 3.1 Type C ; 1x HDMI Port; 1x Card Reader (SD Only); Power off USB Charging Color Options Black, White

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