The Acer Aspire S 13 has a "diamond-etched" bezel around the trackpad. That's what a company representative kept saying when helping me differentiate the $699 notebook from its myriad competitors. But while she was talking, I kept thinking back to my first laptop some 13 years ago, a beastly Dell thing that weighed nearly eight pounds and, despite its sub-1Ghz clock speed, could have doubled as a snowblower for all the fan noise it generated.
The Aspire S 13 boasts a 13-inch 1080p panel — touch optional — along with a sixth-generation Intel Core processor, between 4GB and 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of SSD storage. Obviously, the $699 entry-level will feature the bottom end of those specs, but there is still a lot to like about the S 13 at that price point. And because even the cheapest option runs a Skylake processor, you're looking at between 10 and 13 hours of battery life, which would have been unheard of just a few years ago.
Acer may not have the brand cache of a Lenovo or Dell, but the company has done a fine job building competent and attractive products in recent years. While the Aspire S 13 isn't as immediately gratifying as the Surface-like, liquid-cooled Switch Alpha 12, it's also got considerably more mass appeal, which makes it more interesting — even if it is boring.
