Acer Aspire S7 review, specs: The 2014 edition of the Haswell-powered and Windows 8.1 running Acer Aspire S7 sports some very good upgrades from its predecessor. Features of the 2014 edition of the Ultrabook include a 13.3-inch hi resolution display, Intel HD graphics, an excellent battery life and fast Solid State Drive.

Starting at $899, the Acer Aspire S7 is claimed by its manufacturer as “responsive and ready.” The company’s pitch for the machine is noted below:

“It wakes up the moment you need it, with your apps and data already up-to-date. You can work and play fast on the new Aspire S7, as it packs a RAID 0 solid state drive (SSD) with two times quicker performance than standard SSDs. Another fresh feature is Acer Purified.Voice technology3 for crystal-clear chats, free of noise.”

LaptopMag reviews the $1,399 variant of the Ultrabook, specs of which include a Haswell chip and a new high-definition WQHD display. The display of the Ultrabook, as LaptopMag describes “screams premium” and its sharp straight edges line the aluminum unibody of the machine. The S7 has a silver, straw-width hinge housing two subtle indicator lights for power and battery.

The site also noted that the Acer Aspire S7 delivers a stunning visual experience, since the manufacturer has bumped up the S7’s 13-inch IPS display to to WQHD. It now has a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. Colors in the display are also vivid and viewing angles are ample.

LaptopMag remarks that the Acer Aspire S7 packs the same resolution as the Zenbook UX301 (2560 x 1440p) but it’s not as sharp as the MacBook Pro (2560 x 1600p) and the ATIV Book 9 (3200 x 1800P).

The variant of the Ultrabook that was reviewed has a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200 Haswell CPU, 8GB of RAM and 128GB Solid State Drive. These under the hood specs make the Acer Aspire S7 a very speedy device, especially for daily tasks. In a test by LaptopMag they wrote:

“We smoothly typed a Google Doc while streaming an episode of ‘American Dad’ on Netflix and installing the ‘League of Legends’ client in the background.”

The 128GB SSD in the system enabled the unit to boot up in a mere 6 seconds. It’s less than half the time it takes an average ultraportable (15 seconds) and much faster than the MacBook Pro (12 seconds), the Zenbook (12 seconds), and the ATIV Book 9 Plus (11 seconds).

Powered by Haswell, the battery life of the S7 as per the site’s test is at 6 hours and 44 minutes. It falls short of the expected 8 hours that’s usually delivered by Haswell-powered devices.

All in all with top of the line specs and great design, the Acer Aspire S7 is definitely a buy.