--- title: Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price | TIME description: The Acer S3 beats Apple's lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Air by $400 while matching its weight and thickness. What's the catch? canonical: https://time.com/video/Z4eW6d0h/ og:title: Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price og:description: The Acer S3 beats Apple's lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Air by $400 while matching its weight and thickness. What's the catch? og:url: https://time.com/video/Z4eW6d0h/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Z4eW6d0h/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price twitter:description: The Acer S3 beats Apple's lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Air by $400 while matching its weight and thickness. What's the catch? twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Z4eW6d0h/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price [Watch (HLS stream): Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z4eW6d0h.m3u8) (2:01)  _Published 2011-10-21. The Acer S3 beats Apple's lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Air by $400 while matching its weight and thickness. What's the catch?_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [This Is Apple’s Brand New MacBook Pro](/video/L4gQLFKQ/) ### This Is Apple’s Brand New MacBook Pro [Apple’s new MacBook trio: Gold, gray, silver](/video/MrR6Xq2B/) ### Apple’s new MacBook trio: Gold, gray, silver [Samsung Takes On the MacBook Air](/video/MJ2PZrrJ/) ### Samsung Takes On the MacBook Air --- ## Transcript MacBook Air style and a PC- like price tag. That, my friends, is the promise of Acer's new S3 Ultrabook. At $ 900, it beats the cheapest 13 inch MacBook Air by a good $ 400 yet it's roughly the same size and weight. So, what's the catch? There's no catch. [ MUSIC ] 'Kay, there's a catch, but first the specs. Dual core, Intel Core, i5 processor and 1. 6 giga hertz, 4 giga bytes memory, 32o giga bytes hard drive for file storage, plus a second 20 giga bytes solid state drive that houses the operating system, Windows 7 Home premium. And maintains the computers state for a zoom in from standby in less than two seconds. Card reader, two USB ports, HDMI output, just over half an inch thick, just under three pounds, measures about twelve and a half inches wide by about eight and a half inches long. Okay. So what do you get for $ 900 bucks? Well, it's fast, it's portable, the keyboard is pretty good, that resumes from standby time is amazing, and it's a sexy slab of. [ MUSIC ] I don't, like using sexy with gadgets. It's just, I don't. It looks real nice. If I wasn't already married I would ask it out on a date. So, you were born in China. I was born in America. Minnesota actually, that's why it sounds. So finally I talk. So what's missing? Battery life lives a bit to be desired. You'll get about four hours if you're really pushing it maybe four and a half if your just kind of mozying. Gaming hm, serious gaming, no. The screen doesn't get all that bright either and if your comparing it to a Mac Book Air you'll lose the back of the keyboard and Screen resolution on this one is 1366x768. The MacBook area you get a 1440x900. All things considered the Acer S3 makes a good choice for a 13 inch notebook thanks to its form factor and its nimble performance. The biggest strike against it, of course, is the relatively lackluster battery life, but other than that you're getting a lot for well shy of the grand. [ MUSIC ] I got to stop making these videos at night. How many takes was that? That was like a hundred takes. A teleprompter would've helped too. Can't be bothered to set it up right in front of the camera, that would involve set up. So, I'll just wing it for an hour. God. Idiot. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Acer S3 Ultrabook: MacBook Air Style, PC Price","description":"The Acer S3 beats Apple's lowest-priced 13-inch MacBook Air by $400 while matching its weight and thickness. What's the catch?","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Z4eW6d0h/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2011-10-21T01:08:58.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Z4eW6d0h.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/Z4eW6d0h/","duration":"PT2M1S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/Z4eW6d0h/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```