Acer announces Aspire S3 ultrabook, starts at €799

Following the lead of Toshiba and Lenovo, Acer is officially joining the ultrabook fray at the IFA trade show in Berlin with the Aspire S3. The device has a 13.3-inch 1366 x 768 display, measures 0.51-inches thick, runs a low voltage Core i3, i5 or i7 processor from Intel, and uses on-board flash memory for quick startup times and faster performance via caching.

Its chassis is made from an aluminum-magnesium alloy and sports a form factor reminiscent of Apple's MacBook Air line. Specifications are still rather sketchy at this point but we do know Acer will be offering up to a 240GB SSD or 500GB HDD for storage. Other features include an HDMI port, 2-in-1 SD card reader, 1.3MP webcam, a single headset jack, a pair of USB 2.0 ports (no USB 3.0, it seems), 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0+HSR.

Apart from that, there will be a full-size chiclet keyboard and a fairly large multi-touch trackpad with integrated mouse buttons. Acer claims up to 7 hours of battery life for the SSD equipped model, so expect less on the hard drive models.

The new Acer Aspire S3 should start selling in select regions sometime later this month, retailing from €799 ($1,138) and going all the way to €1,199 ($1,707), depending on the system specifications you choose.