Acer Aspire S7 review: The Windows 8.1 Ultrabook has a Haswell processor under the hood and has been receiving raves for its speed, long battery life and great specs. Having a 13.3-inch hi-res display, Intel HD graphics and Solid State Drive, the Acer Aspire S7 is a premium touchscreen ultrabook making its way in the market.

Starting at $899, the Acer Aspire S7 is claimed by its manufacturer as “responsive and ready.” Several reviewers agree. 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.”

It’s speed and premium feel has bee confirmed by a tech reviewer.

LaptopMag reviews the $1,399 variant of the Ultrabook, features 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 silver, straw-width hinge housing two subtle indicator lights for power and battery.

The S7 gives you a great visual experience, especially since the company has bumped the S7’s 13-inch IPS display to WQHD. Its resolution has increased, now at 2560 x 1440 pixels. Colors coming from it are vivid and the viewing angles is 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 gadgets and machines powered by the chipset.

All in all, however, the Acer Aspire S7’s top of the line specs and overall performance makes it a good buy in many fronts.