Acer Aspire V3 review: an affordable, Kepler-packing laptop for back-to-school season

Back in March at CeBIT, Acer unveiled a slew of new laptops, among which the Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 Ultrabook was easily the most celebrated. But while slim designs and instant-on technology are shoe-ins for media attention, slightly thicker machines with revved-up internals and discrete graphics are champions of the "don't judge a book by its cover" philosophy. And besides, not everyone is willing to part with a DVD drive, much less spend $1,000-plus on their next PC.

Hence Acer's Aspire V3, which is available in sizes ranging from 14 to 17.3 inches (for the purposes of this review, we took a look at the middleweight 15.6-inch version). While it weighs a hefty 5.8 pounds and looks positively bloated next to 0.8-inch-thick laptops such as the M3, the V3 packs serious power in the form of NVIDIA Kepler graphics and a Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPU. And unlike many Ultrabooks trickling their way into the market, this guy is priced to compete, making it a viable choice for the back-to-school season. But is it the best mainstream notebook $850 can buy? Let's see.

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Acer Aspire V3 review: an affordable, Kepler-packing laptop for back-to-school season originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.