Acer S5-391-9880 review: Acer S5-391-9880

It was back in January, at CES 2012, that we first saw the $1,399 13-inch Acer Aspire S5 ultrabook. Of course, if you remember the S5 from CES, you'll recall its most unique feature -- a tiny motorized door at the back of the bottom panel that opens at the touch of a button, revealing a ports-and-connections block, including HDMI and Thunderbolt (making this one of only a handful of Thunderbolt laptops). Acer calls this the MagicFlip I/O Port.

8.0

Acer S5-391-9880

The Good

The <b>Acer Aspire S5</b> is an incredibly thin and light ultrabook that hides its ports, including Thunderbolt, behind a clever motorized door.

The Bad

That port door, named the MagicFlip, is a potential problem if it ever breaks down. The keyboard isn't backlit, and battery life could be better.

The Bottom Line

Even thinner and lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Air, the Acer Aspire S5 is a great example of an ambitious ultrabook, held back by a few flaws and its high price.

It's certainly clever, and it earns points for originality and engineering. But call me crazy, I'd prefer to have my USB ports sitting right on the side of the laptop, easy to access without having to push a button and wait.

Another potential issue is that the MagicFlip is just one more mechanical part to potentially break down (but note that it has worked perfectly fine in the CNET Labs for several days and dozens of activations). If, for whatever reason, it gets stuck or stops working, you're sitting on a laptop with very limited connectivity. Especially in a thin, light ultrabook, having fewer moving parts is better -- hence the move to SSD storage over spinning-platter hard drives.

That said, the motorized port door is not even the most noteworthy thing about the S5, nor its biggest selling point. Even compared with other 13-inch ultrabooks, this system is incredibly thin and light. It weighs only 2.6 pounds (without its power adapter), and is 15mm thick at its thickest point (tapering to 11mm at the front).

That makes the 13-inch MacBook Airlook and feel a bit chunky in comparison, which is no easy task. Acer also manages to work in an Intel Core i7 CPU (but no discrete graphics, sorry), so it's certainly powerful enough for everyday use.

At $1,399, this is scraping the high end of the ultrabook market, and I'm not sure even the extreme portability justifies the price, but it's certainly tempting -- this is a laptop that's simply fun to use.

What I'd love to see is a version of the S5 that stays as thin and light, but skips the gimmicky motorized flap, perhaps adding a millimeter or two to fit in the USB and HDMI ports. The MagicFlip can't be an inexpensive part to include. Dropping it might allow Acer to bring the price down closer to $1,000, where it would be much harder to resist.