2013 Acer Aspire S3 gets an Aspire S7 re-fresh

The first time we saw the new Acer Aspire S3 is at the Western Digital booth where they claim it uses the new 5mm WD Slim hard drives with storage of up to 1TB. Acer has re-designed their 1st-generation ultrabook and make look like the Aspire S7.

Of course, there were a few differences — the keyboard is black instead of gray and the body looks a little thicker and heavier.

Still, that white lid with gray accent can easily fool you. Instead of the Gorilla Glass 2 which was used in the S7, the new S3 uses a transparent coating/material in the lid to make it look glossy and seem like glass (obviously, to cut down on material costs). They still use aluminum here so expect an almost similar premium feel.

The Aspire S3 also has USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, SD card reader on top of the variable hardware configuration — 13.3-inch IPS LCD @ 1920×1080 pixels, 500GB – 1TB WD HDD or 128GB/256GB SSD, up to 10GB DDR3 RAM. As for the CPU, it could be a Core i3, i5 or i7 Intel Haswell processor and an NVidia GT735M graphics.

We were actually expecting an Aspire S9 from Acer but it looks like the best they could do was improve the Aspire S3 (significantly) and then add a WQHD (2560×1440 pixels) IPS panel on the S7.

The Aspire S3 might be priced starting at $999PHP 58,627INR 84,665EUR 951CNY 7,271, depending on configuration.