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If you’re looking for an Ultrabook with the superslim good looks of a MacBook Air, enough computing oomph to handle multimedia and general business tasks, plus a good-enough battery life, take a long hard look at the Acer Aspire S5 and Laptop Keyboard Cover . Especially the superslim good looks part. The S5 is less than three quarters of an inch at its thickest and weighs 2.6 pounds–impressively light for a notebook with a 13.3-inch display. In almost every way, the S5 fulfills the promise of the Ultrabook as articulated by Intel: It’s extremely portable, very fast, and endowed with decent battery life and compact Acer Aspire Keyboard and Acer Keyboard Cover . True, you can find several Ultrabooks with better battery life, and maybe one or two with superior performance–and the Aspire S5 has its fair share of minor drawbacks. But none of the ones we’ve seen are thinner. That’s thanks in no small part to an innovative motorized panel that Acer calls the MagicFlip, which rolls down to conceal ports on the rear bottom edge. This both protects them when not in use and slims down the S5's profile so it’s both thinner and lighter than the current 13.3-inch MacBook Air. But the motor makes a somewhat grating noise, and sometimes it seemed to roll up of its own volition. Also, I worry that the motor, activated by a button on the top right of the platen, adds one more part that could break. Configured with one of Intel’s fastest current ultraportable CPUs, the Core i7-3517U running at 1.9GHz (with a maximum turbo speed of 3GHz), 4GB of RAM, integrated HD 4000 graphics, a 256GB solid-state drive, and the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Home Premium adn other Compatible Parts , the Aspire S5 is on the pricey side at $1399 (as of July 18, 2012), but not spectacularly so for its components (especially the SSD). That solid-state drive, combined with the Core i7 Ivy Bridge Ultrabook CPU, helped the S5 to its highly respectable overall performance score of 82, on a par with other top performers on our Ultrabook chart, including the Dell XPS 13. That overall score includes the S5's stratospheric 195 on our WorldBench 7 test suite, thanks mostly to its spectacular startup and laptop parts - hard-drive file operation scores, which typically rise dramatically with SSDs. Other scores that contribute to WorldBench were also generally above average, although not enormously so. It’s worth noting that the S5 did very well in our gaming tests, even though it has no discrete graphics. Hard-core gamers can, of course, do better, but general users who want to sneak in the occasional Dirt 3 session shouldn’t be put off. The Aspire S5's 5.5-hour battery life is about average for its class and screen size: It won’t get you across the Atlantic or the Pacific, but should be sufficient for most transcontinental flights. The S5's good looks don’t stop with its black brushed aluminum exterior. Most of the chassis is fashioned from a magnesium-aluminum alloy that feels smooth and surprisingly solid on the inside, given how thin the notebook is. However, the bottom does get a bit warm after prolonged use. The Acer Aspire Keyboard and Acer Keyboard Cover is nothing special. Keys are a tad mushy and very slippery, and they have no backlighting. But Acer uses a conventional layout so at least they’re located where you expect them to be. The clickable Elan touchpad is roomy, smooth, and precise, but if, like me, you prefer a conventional mouse, Acer has been kind enough to include a Bluetooth mouse. That’s definitely unusual in laptop land. For more laptop reviews
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