Acer Aspire S7 Touch Screen Ultrabook Review – World’s Fastest Ultrabook Intros New SSD Form Factor

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)

You may not see this for long (and its definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta besting new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and utilize in our benchmark testing.

Acer S7 Anvil Utilities

 Anvil Storage Utilities provides some of our best information yet along with full identification of the ultrabook and sub-system where we can see that INtel RST 11.5 is in use for the RAID configuration.  Although high sequential transfer speeds are a bit lower, the low 4k random write performance of 141MB/s confirms what we saw earlier and 4k-QD16 IOPS is also pushed to 103,168 IOPS which was definitely not expected.

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

  • Windows Defender In Use
  • Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
  • Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
  • Starting the Vista Operating System
  • Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
  • Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
  • Cataloging a music library
  • Starting applications

ACER S7 ULTRABOOK PCMARK VANTAGE TOTAL POINTS SCORE

The Acer S7 Total Point Score reached a high of 49385 points with a high transfer speed of 1038MB/s transfer speed when testing in Windows Media Player.  This is perhaps the highest transfer speed we have seen achieved in Vantage, however, the remaining seven tests were very dissappointing as all remained in the SATA 2 range, the lowest being 128MB/s which is one of the worst results we have seen from an SSD in some time.  We would love the opportunity to test a ‘fresh’ Lite-On SSD as we are certain these results are indicative of the constant testing on this SSD, paired with the manufacturers OS and software configuration.

Vantage

15 comments

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    Anyone know where I can find out more about LITEONIT CMT-64L3M 64.0 GB ? That is what appears to be used in my ACER Aspire S5. 128 GB SSD system. Are there 2 mSATA slots or is this one module with 2 Channels ?
    Steve

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    The laptop was unusable because of a know issue where WiFi connection is unstable; that means every few secons you get disconnects from your WiFi router, interrupting your internet connection.

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    YOu probably tested the fan noise in Power save mode on batteries ?
    This thing runs two 10K RPM fans producing 50db under load. not much load needed at all to go up to 50db. All other things are irrelevant. This is crappy laptop

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    Respected Sir,
    I want to buy an ultrabook that has the follwing specifications,
    SSD only,core i5,touch screen,battery backup upto 6 hrs.
    Kindly suggest me the best option.
    i will be greatly thankful to you.

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    Les,
    Have you experienced any of the wifi issuies with the Acer that have been reported elsewhere?
    Do you think the 128g version will have the same performance (transfer speeds, etc.) as the 256 that you reviewed?

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      I haven’t got the unit any more, however, the WiFi would not be associated to capacity of the SSD I wouldn’t think. I was looking it over from the piks that I have on hand and maybe its possible that they ran into the same issue that the S9 experienced where the Wifi was losing signal because of the aluminum shell. Samsung fixed that be incorporating two plastic pieces where the WiFi antenna sits.

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        Les,
        Sorry I wasn’t more specific. I was wondering if the 128g version will have the same hard-wired data transfer performance as the 256.

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        I can’t test this but logically even you RAIDED write transfer speeds will drop somewhat for lower capacity drives when transferring highly incompressible data such as this.

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        Thanks. I ended up getting a 15.6″ Macbook pro with a 256SSD. I’ll be using your SSD optimization guide when it arrives:)

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    Were you able to confirm if the SSD can be upgraded to a higher capacity SSD using a normal msata drive or do the custom connectors/configuration make changing to a normal msata SSD impossible?

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